Full text of "Amiga Computing Issue 017 Oct 89"

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COMPUTING 




October 1989 




A MEGABYTE OF SUPER SOFTWARE 



• Chariots of Wrtth 

• The Motion Maker 

• Globe • Qukkstart 

• Mucking wtth Macros 

• DtskOpttmiser 



• PowerPacfcer 

• Pkture This Demo 

• Workbench Mandtebrot 

• KillFaitMem • IconMaiter 

• DiskView • IFF Converter 



To load: Switch on and insert disc 
Full Instructions are in the October issue ol Amiga Computing 






\!\proqra»& 

Games, hacks, tools, 
music, utilities 
and much more 




1W 




x 



tr * 



Pack Includes: 

A500CPU. Mouse. P.S.U..T.V. Modulator, Very 
First Tutorial. Workbench 1 -3, Basic, Extras and 
Manuals. 

PLUS POSTRONIX BONUS PACK 

WORTH OVER £250 which includes 10 Blank 

Disks. Disk Storage Box. 10 Excellent Games, Mouse Mat. 
Mouse Bracket (Mouse Holder) Deluxe Point. 

£199 00 

01%) J J •W t-£5.U0pmt and packing 

AMIGA 500 plus DISK DRIVE AMIGA 500 + 1084S 

Instruction Manuals. Extra Disk, Workbench L-3, CTl?Dl?^/ 

The Very First Tutorial, T.V. Modulator. Photon a 1 EjM\Lj\JI 

Paint. Mouse PLUS additional Amiga Compatible fiAT f\¥TD XirWJITAD 

Disk Drive and 10 Blank Disks. MJ1A/U1\ MUlM 1 XJSK 

£649.00 

+ £10.00 posl and packing 




£449.00 



+ £5.0) posl 
and packing. 



(including the 
Amiga 500 deal) 




A 



mps 1200P £229.99 

t £5.OQ0osl and packing 

The Commodore MPSI200P primer presents the male of ihc an in dox mairix printers, with all the features of a primer that 
would cost much more. The MPS I200P is designed lo be like three pnnlers in one. It can act just like an Epson FX printer, or 
with the flip of a switch, it can act just like an IBM Graphics Printer with IBM Group IM character set (Danish/Norwegian 
character set ) support. It can also print all the characters available with the Amiga in the Amiga configuration. The MPS1200P 
is capable of all the printing functions you would expect, as well as some additional features you may not expect. 

MPS 1500C COLOUR PRINTER £199,99 

A. TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS + ^ ^ packing 

PRINTING TECHNIQUE Impact dot matrix (9-needle pnnl head). 

DRAFT MODE matrix: 0 vertical dots* (5 +4) horizontal dots; - prim speed: 12flchar/s.al HVcharin 

TABULATION SPEED 2char/s 

PRINTING DIRECTION bi-directional, with optimised head movement 

PRINT PfTHES 10char/into24/char/inprogrammaWefromIine.andinSET-UPmode 

LINEFEED ™- l/6in(4.Bmm|,iy8i3.17mm)and7/72in(2.4mm): -n/2l6inandn/72in. 

CHARACTER SET ASCIIcruracteisandspccialcharacters. . 

PRINT LINE LENGTH 40top 192 characters, according to pnnt pitch selected. 




1084S STEREO/COLOUR 
MONITOR MCQ AO 

Compatible with PC, *J J *\j\J 

Amiga. C64c. C128 + £5 - 00 P 1 * 1 and P ackin S 



AMIGA 


1010 DIS 


X DRIVE 




AMIGA 1010 DISK DRIVE 

Amiga 3.5" external drive. Capacity 880K 
PLUS FREE DISK £ 1 /(ft Qft 

STORAGE BOX & cfc 1 7 • 7 7 

10 BLANK DISKS +£5.00 post and packing 



A501 RAM 
PACK 

512Kfor the Amiga 



£149.99 

♦ £5.00 post and packing 



■ 



. . AND MORE BESIDES! 



£169.99 




THIS TOPICAL (iAMKS 

( OMlM-vnil M OFFERS A TRI E 

SPORTING CHALLENGE 

Park cowans CMc Computer 1530 
Datasettc. Qruckihoi JovtiKk. Matdipom 
iTcnrm | . Snooker . Wood Chflraponwir 
Boxing. Daley Thomp*on*S«pcrtc*t T 

Hywrwom. Um IwUn D, 

Daley Tnompsim Decathlon. Ba*ifl 
V .!■■"■: l'„.. .11 Ifickl. 

PLUS POSTRONIX BONIS PACK 
OF £100 OF FREE SOFTW ARE 

£149.99 

•tflU pound pkLiai 



1541 II DISK DRIVE PACK 

Pack rndude* 

541 II Dak Dm* . 10 EKeDent Dnk Game*. 20 Blank 
D»ks.5irDi*ketic Storage Box ANDGHfl 



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AN EXCELLENT PACK PKOWIHv. 
HOIKS OK ENTER! A I N M r NT FOR U 
Mi THE FAMILY 

Pick mdwte; CMc Computer 15.10 Dm Cawtir. Ockski U 1m 
Personal Hi-Fi. Comrnodofe Juke Hot A»ckoTapc(IOHi»l m 
SHS10FM Diplal Keyboard with MhIi. GhoMbuMet. foOaromd TaC 

April XII. Supra* Game. 

Plus: POSTRONIX BONUS PACK OF £1MG 
FREE SOFTWARE 



only £199.99 



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* GREAT IMH'BLE THEME PACK 
OIEFRING THE BFiTOF HOLLYWOOD, 
PLUS A COMPENDIUM OF T.V. GAME SHOWS 

Pack include*: CMc 1550 Data Cawttc, Quicbhot tl )mnkt. The Great 
Eitapc. Miami Vice. Platoon. Raraho. Top Gon, Ever) Stand Ctwiu. 
BlocibuMerv Bullae. Trivial Purwii. Krypton Factor. 

Plus: POSTRONIX BONUS PACK ONLY £149.99 



OF £100 OF FREE SOFTWARE 



ROLLER 



icontroli.er 

tconlroller a semi permanently 
mnunlcd on your avmputer comolc. 
Iconlroller leave* hand* on the 
keyboard while executing Icon 
command* with yinir fingertips 




£15.99 



STARFIGHTER 

Compatible Ml Sinclair 
Spectrum. Commodore. Alan 
Computer*. Atari 2MKI Video 
Game* Systems 




A) 1750 RAM EXPANSION MODULE FOR CBM 128 

Staph r*ii d Mi rac opaown pun on your CBM 128 ud J12K ByM of 
jWjikxij] tlin jit jvaibblr 

B) 1551 COMMODORE MOUSE 

TV Cuunodre 1351 Miw & cualiiACr dc>fKd for BK Ik tfcc CBM 

C 1 1764 RAM EXPANSION MODULE FOR COMMODORE 64 

Hondo you get ituUlnl320K Ramonnw M. put plug in the ITM Module 

a £149.99 b £19.99 c £99.99 

Al pneo - L* tfi poo M ptckinc 



CHEETAH 125+ 

Compatible with Spectrum. 
Commodore. Alan 2nOU Video 
Sy*tem. Atan. Amstrad PC. 
Amstrad. 




CHALLENGER DELUXE 

Compatible »nh Spectrum I with 
optional interface). Commodore. 
Atari 2HH1 Video Syflem Alan 
Computer* Amstrad computer. 



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TAC 5 

CONTROLLER 
JOYSTICK 

Compatible with A tan 
Commodore. 

£13.99 




• 15 111 fiW uW pel mi 



SESKOSHA 



PRINTER 



SEIKOSHA 
PRINTER 

Compatible with mc*l 
make* of Commodore 
computer. Features 
variety ol fonts including 
graphic* and near letter qualm , reverse printing, italic*, 
tractor (eed and paper tepentor Come* complete with senal 
cable 



SLIKSTIK JOYSTICK 
CONTROLLER 

Compatible with Alan Computer*. 
Atan Game* Sy*lcm . Commodore 



£159.« 



£6.99 




COMPETITION PRO 5000 

Compalible with Commodore M and 
Vic 20. Sinclair ZX Spectrum I interface 
required). 

£14.95 




RAM DELTA DELUXE 

MicRosvvrrcHjoYsnc 

Compatible with Atan computer* ami 
Video Game* Machine* Anoirad PC* 
(with adaptor) Spectrum 
<w*h adaptor). fQ ft 

Commodore dt7.7 




TAC 2 CONTROLLER 
JOYSTICK 

Compatible with Commodore W 
and Vic 20. Atari Computer* 
Atan Game System*. 




£10.99 



MICRO HANDLER Ml IT 
FUNCTION JOYSTICK 

CompatiNe with Coraaodore O—wfe 
OfV+4(ai^Hmrea«redl „- . ft 

a- £24.9. 



X AVAILABLE FROM 



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new range of innovative 
covers, made from 
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C64 OLD STYLE £6.99 

C64C NEW STYLE £7.99 

AMIGA 500 £9.99 

ATARI 520ST £9.99 

ATARI 1040ST £9.99 



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Managing Editor 
Dere k Meakin 

Editor 
Simon Rockman 

Assistant Editor 
Jeff Walker 

Sfaff writer 
NicVdlch 



WW. A SCliM 



7 LATEST 
NEWS 

George Lucas to produce an Amiga 
telly ad. HyperCard look-alike from 
the producers of Maxiplan. Loads of 
shows and gossip from the front. 



Quick, quid. 

slow. The 
midget racer 
Page 86 




Production Editor 
Peter Glover 

AH Editors 
Mark Nolan 
Doug Steele 

News Editor 
Don Lewis 

Advertisement Manager 
John Soowden 

Advertising Sales 
Wendy Colburn 



Editorial 
.Umiflistnbon 
AoVtrtiartf, 
Subscriptions 
Telecom Gold: 
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Published by: 
Dal abase Publications [id. 
Europa House, Adlinglon Park, 
Aldington. Macclesfield SklO 4NP. 

ISSN 095;-fi!MH 

Amiga Computing wdcoma article! for publi- 
cation Material ihouid be typed or computer- 
prinled. and preferably double-fpaced. Program h*l- 
mp ihoald br wxoriDanied In di«. Please mlof 
a tumped. wlf-addr-Med envelope, olberww Ihr 
rttuni of material cannol be guaranteed Cortri- 
bubou tan wily be accepted for publication by 
Database Publications Ud on an all-rights bask. 
$ 19M Database Pubbotioni Ud. No material mai 
be reproduced in whole or in part without written 
penrouino. While enry rare u taken, the pub- 
hhen cannot be beU legally mponsible for any 
on m article*. Itfflnti or advertisemenU. 

Amw Gmpoting it an mdepotoem' puhfobdn 
ud Commedm Boom Machine /i'A'J Ud t* 
oof raponaMe for any el the arutfatotDBSwar 
for any of fhe anenoai eiprEoerf 

New* hade diitnbu(ion Europra* Salts and Du 
tnbutiiin Limited. Lnn 1. Burteu Road, Iryhouu 
lane. Hat&no. I* Suuei TNJS 4NR Tel: 0421 
OM22 



WIK. \ \l«;\l)l 



UL THE VERY LATEST 
JL JL GAMES NEWS 
Ocean flies to keep up with Batman, 
Electronic Arts put the mark of the 
Hound of the Shadow on you, and 
more on the coming games. 



It ASK. IIIHK 



M V lll\l mm 



i di t vruix 



39 



55 



PICTURE 
THIS 



Hitting the hardware direct is the way 
ahead for easy performance 
programming. Jolyon Ralph looks at 
bitmaps and scrolling registers. 



1)1. Sh 1 1 H' IM 111 IMIIM. 



TACKLING THE 
TABOO 

Are the people who program without 
any structure stupid. Are those who 
use flowcharts boring? John Kennedy 
strikes a happy medium. 



< (>\ I It DIM 



fajL / CRAMMED INTO 
JL / A MEGABYTE 

Fourteen of the latest and greatest 
programs squeezed, compressed and 
cajoled on to one disc. Sample the 
superb Chariots of Wrath. How to get 
something for nothing with 
Powerpacker Make your own 
animations with Movie Maker. See 
the world, meet the Mandlebrot and 
kill fast ram. Half Brile and other 
programming secrets revealed with 
the Amiga Computing Demo. Covert 
IFF to raw data. Reduce the time it 
takes to boot with Quickstart. Faster 
floppies with DiskOpl Plus loads of 
other hints and programs. 



70 



BIG BOX 
BARGAIN 

A collection of all the programs you 
need to produce Amiga DTP for less 
than the price of a word processor. 
Rupert Goodwins takes a look. 



67 



FUN OUT 
OF SCHOOL 



There is precious little educational 
software available. Alex Aird and his 
family look to see if quality in one 
program justifies lack of quantity. 



WIK. MM is 



82 



UNDER THE 
WORKBENCH 



Do you know why the prices of blank 
discs vary so much? Is a more 
expensive one better? Henning 
Sorenscn looks at storage. 



October 1989 



O M P U T 



t Chariots of Wrath 

• The Motion Maker 

• Globe • Quickstart 

• Mucking with Macros 

• OiskOpbmiser 



• PowerPacker 

• Weturt- Thii Demo 

• Workbench Mandlebrot 

t KaiFattMem • IconMatier 

• DrskVtew # IFF Convert* 



. v Hl turn 

To load: Switch on and inser t disc 
ftj^atog are ,n me Sepiem bei IS5ue o,Ar^^T g 




4 AMIGA COMPLETING October 1989 



■ CONTENTS! 





Who needs a 32 bit processor? Unless Celebrity author Dean Friedman casts 

*ou want io tackle some really a critical ear over the available 

•pecialist applications it might not samplers and software to compare the 

uve you time and cost a fortune. Amiga with musical instruments. 



V\()KI)l*Kll(KSSI\t 



DIMS 



89 



USING 
PROTEXT 



You can have hours of fun with a 
really good word processor. There is 
a lot to team about setting up the 
system. Peter Ceresole explains. 



( i»\in:ini(>\ 



^-1 LIFE IN THE 
\J li FAST LANE 
Enter Artronic s racing compo and 
add some high speed spice to your 
life. Plus the chance to drive at 
Silverstone. 



103 



GAME 
KILLER 



Max Tennant. joystick king and 
generally nice guy offers help and 
hints with the greatest games from 
Interceptor to Leonardo. 





I.KAIMIICS 



u; i i i:ks 



95 



LOW COST 
RAY TRACE 



107 



At an eighth of the price of some ray 
tracing programs. C-light proves to be 
* powerful way to produce 
mathematical marvels. Alastair Scott 
checks it out. 



YOUR RIGHT 
TO WRITE 

Timescanner problems. Which 
sampler gives the best value? What 
happened to the save in 
Archipelagos? Yes it is there. And 
more of your views. 



Xenon Pige20and21 




Populous Page 36 




# Xenon 11:100% perfect for Bitmaps 

# New Zealand Story looks too 8 bit 

# Nightdawn, puzzle with a blast 



• Populous data adds classic sparkle 

• Fiendish Freddy is lots of fun 

• Barbarian II: Thud and blunder 

• Chariots of Wrath: Impressive? 

• Gemini Wing - double trouble 

• Wake Sleeping Gods for action 

• Delphine's Castle Warrior fights on 

• Wander in Hewson s Astaroth 

• Linel wipes out in Skate of the .Art 

• and more ,., 



October 1989 AMIGA UKUPt ll\t. 5 





micro 



HARDWARE & SOFTWARE 
SPECIALISTS 

SHOWROOM 
13 LANSDOWNE ROAD 
BOURNEMOUTH DORSET 







PRICES EXC. 






VJLT- 






• 






o:-:«^v.v'- 



EXC. VAT 



@ (0202) 24927/813176 



£5 DELIVERY 



AMIGA A500 

+ FREE £220 SOFTWARE 

INCLUDING:- -PURPLE SATURN • HOSTAGES 

• INTERNATIONAL SOCCER • WINTER OLYMPIAD 

• SPITTING IMAGE • STARGOOSE • BACKLASH 

• QUADRAUEN • ELIMINATOR - 20 P/D GAMES 

• FANTASTICK F3 JOYSTICK 1 R 

• TV MODULATOR 1 



AMIGA A500/ 

1084(S) MONITOR £476 



AMIGA B2000/ 

1084(S) MONITOR £1049 

INC ACCESSORIES 



AMIGA A500 

INCLUDING:- 

• MOUSE • WORKBENCH 

• UTILITIES • MANUALS 
•BASIC -TUTORIAL 

- TV MODULATOR 



AMIGA B2000/ 
PHILIPS 8833 

INCLUDING:- 

• MOUSE • WORKBENCH 

• BASIC • UTILITIES • MANUALS 
- XT BRIDGE BOARD 

• 20Mb HARD DISK 



£1299 



AMIGA B2000 

INCLUDING:- MOUSE • WORKBENCH 
• BASIC ■ UTILITIES ■ MANUALS 



£799 



A50D HARDWARE 



A500.TVMOD £305 

A500 * £200 of GAMES £339 

A500 * 1064(S) HIGH 

RES COLOUR MONT C476 

A500 + IBM DRIVE £399 



AMIGA EXTERNAL 
DRIVES 



Cumana Cax 354E ...... £79 

AF880 £78 

RF302C £74 

Supra 20mb H/disk £499 

* All drives imb * on/oft switch * 



AMIGA ACCESSORIES 



A501-512K RAM _ £109 

TV Modulator™ £22 

Mouse Mat .....£4.29 

AmiQa dust-cover £6.89 

3.5 135TPIDS/DD £999 




A2000 HARDWARE 



A2000* imbRAM £869 

A2000 * 1084(8) monitor 

♦ bridge BD * 20mb H/disk ...£1369 

A2CO0 * 1084(8) £1049 

20mb hard disk a £299 

XT bridge BD £299 



A500/A2000 
MONITORS 



I084(s) High res monil £209 

Philips CM8833High res ~£199 

1901 C64 - colour C« 1 1 

i900C64-Mono £119 



PRINTERS 



Star LC10(P) 130CDS £137 

Star LC10 Colour £169 

Star LC24-10 (24 din) £249 

Citizen 120D £105 

Commodore MPS 1230 £119 

Panasonic KXP1124 (24 pin) .. £279 

Panasonic KXP1081 „ £149 

Epson LX800 £158 

Epson LQ5O0 £250 

Epson FX850 £409 

Epson FX105O £382 

Epson EX800 £369 

Epson EX1CO0 £419 



COLOUR PRINTERS 



Citizen HQP40 £352 

Epson EX1000 £543 

Hewlett Packard PaintJet .....E689" 

NECP6+ £469 

NEC P7+ ...E589 

Star LC10 £195 

Xerox 4020 £949 



LASERS 



Citizen overture ™ 

HP Laserjet II 



£1199 
£1825 



BUSINESS S'WARE 



AEGIS Sonix 

Animated Images 3D 

City Desk 

Deluxe Video 

Deluxe Music 

Deluxe Paint 

Digiview Gold 

Home Accounts — ......... 

Mailshot Plus 

Maxiplan A500 

Music Studio 

Organiser II m 

Page Setter 

Page Flipper Plus . 

Photon Paint . — 

Photon Video 



Sale£ 

£39 

£99 

£69 

£49 

£49 

£49 

£99 

£19 

£39 

£69 

£23 

£49 

£89 

£24 

£49 

...Ring 



Professional Page £176 

Pro Writer 2 Ring 

Publisher Plus -„ ,„,j-,, ,■„" 

Sculpt 3-D Animate E102 

Sculpt 3-D £63 

Superbase II £59 

Superbase Personal £44 

Superbase Professional £169 

TV Show/Text £79 

Word Perfect 42 £169 

'Works* £69 

Zumafonts — £25 



£135.00 




Hugely successful 9 pin printer, the 
Star LC10 provides 4 NLQ fonts (with 
96 print combinations) at 36cps and 
144cps draft. Has a large 4K buffer and 
IBM/parallel interface built in, Includes 
a comprehensive front panel operation 
and features paper parking, allowing 
single sheets to be used without re- 
moving tractor paper. 



ALL PRICES EXCLUDE VAT 



CREDIT CARD MAIL ORDER 
AND EXPORT HOTLINE 

(0202) 24927 
(0202) 813176 
OPEN MON-SAT 9am-5.30 pm 

All prices and manufacturer's specifications 
subject to change without notice. 



rT™Firs7 Micro. 13 Lansdowne Road, Bournemouth. Dorset. BH1 1RZ 

I wish to order 

My computer is 



I enclose cheque/PO for £ 

I Or charge my Access/Visa No 

I 
I 

| Address 

I 



inc VAT. 



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6 AMIGA COMPUTING October MM 




AMIGA SCENE 




Amiga 1000 owners have not 

been abandoned 



PROGRESS often means 
thai future develop- 
ments pass existing cus- 
tomers by. Manufacturers 
don't like alienating exis- 
ting customers, but pro- 
gress and (he need to 
compete often demands it. 

Commodore has 
announced that it will 
produce cards for revision 
B Amiga which, whenever 
possible, will mimic future 
Amigas. Owners of A500s 
and AlOOOs will feel the 
pinch. 



The first step in this 
direction is about to be 
taken. The enhanced chip 
set (ECS), will not work 
with the A1000. Although 
in time it may be fitted as 
standard to all A500s and 
A2000s as well as being 
available as an upgrade. 

The A1000 Rejuvenator 
from G.B. Tibbes in Miami 
allows first generation 



Amiga owners to use ECS. 
The upgrade board can be 
installed where the second 
tier of the motherboard ram 
expansion is usually 
located. It is simple to fit 
and does not need you to 
cut or solder any tracks. 

The board also includes a 
clock and A2000 video slot 
which will accept the 
flicker-fixer or a genlock. 



Powerful 
response 

T)OWER Computing (0234 
X 273000) claims to have 
taken the peripheral market 
by storm with its latest 
product, Power Drive, a 
3.5in external double-sided 
disc drive for the Amiga. 

It is the result of a 
£250,000 tie-up with drive 
and printer manufacturer 
Epson and is aimed to 
compete with the current 
wave of Taiwanese imports. 

The Power Drive is boxed 
in matching computer 
colours and the Amiga ver- 
sion costs £69.95. 



Talking 
like a Mac 

ONE of the most useful 
utilities for commercial 
Amiga users is Central Coast 
Software's Dos to Dos which 
allows the Amiga to read 
IBM PC format discs. 
Following the success of 
this, CCS has produced Mac 
to Dos which allows the 
Amiga to read the data from 
Mac discs. 

Although it is not a full 
Mac emulator it is a useful 
way of transferring data in 
offices which use both Apple 
Macs and Amigas. 

Because of the way in 
which a Mac drive works 
Mac to Dos uses special 
hardware and needs a Mac 
drive. For more details con- 
tact Amiga Centre Scotland 
on 031-557 4242. 

Cutting 
the daisies 

i^JUME (0635 523200) has 
V^cut the prices of its two 
leading daisywheel printers, 
the Sprint 11/55 and 11/90. 
The 11/55 has dropped from 
£1 .366 to £850 and the 1 1 /90. 
billed as the fastest daisy- 
wheel printer on the market 
at 90 cps, has been reduced 
from £1,674 to £1,593. 

"Much has been said 
about the death of the daisy- 
wheel printer but we still sell 
plenty of these two models", 
said Qume's distribution 



sales manager Peter Smith. 
"There are a number of 
applications where users 
demand letter quality impact 
printers and the Sprint 11 
range now offers a very cost- 
effective solution". 

Database 
manager 

ARNOR (0733 68909) has 
announced Profile, a 
database management pro- 
gram designed to comp- 
lement Pretext, its top-selling 
word processing package. 
"A lot of existing Protext 



RELATIONAL databases 
ire often difficult 
things to understand. The 
Macintosh community has 
a solution to this - Hyper- 
card. It uses graphics to 
define the relationship 
between the items of datum 
and is very simple to use. 

UltraCard by Mike 
Lehman of Intuitive 
Technologies, the people 
who do MaxiPlan and 
Plan/IT, is the Amiga's 
answer to HyperCard. It has 
full IFF compatibility so 
that pictures and digitised 
sounds can be included in 
the database and selected 
with special effects such as 
wipes and fades. 

This it does because it 
supports all screen resol- 



users were asking if there 
was a database that was 
especially compatible with 
Protext", said Arnor's Mark 
Tilley. "It was their calls 
which gave birth to this 
product". 

Menu-driven Profile is a 
filing system designed for 
ease of use and speed. Its 
compatibility with Protext 
makes it particularly 
efficient for such tasks as 
mail merging, which can be 
achieved without lengthy 
question and answer sess- 
ions. Profile provides the 
various options speedily. 

Arnor puts the price at 
around £80. 



utions except HAM and 
overscan. 

Ultracard programs can 
either be written using the 
graphics interface or its 
own scripting language. 
Other programs can 
communicate with Ultra- 
card by using the ARcxx 
control language, and in 
turn Ultracard can use this 
to control other tasks. 

It uses Hypertext so that 
actions can be triggered 
from either a word or 
phrase. Everything except 
scripting can be done from 
click of mouse. 

No UK price has yet been 
set by the importer, HB 
Marketing (0895 444433) 
but the US price of $75 is 
probably a good guideline. 



No crash 
course for 
flyers 

LEARNING to fly remote 
controlled aircraft, par- 
ticularly helicopters, is a dif- 
ficult and expensive 
business. 

Crash costs can make it 
prohibitive but an American 
simulation program now 
available in the UK will soon 
enlist \he help of the Amiga 
to take the bumps out of 
model aerobatics. 

RC Aerochopper has been 
developed by American firm 
Ambrosia Microcomputers, 
is manufactured by Futaba 
Corporation and is being 
imported into Britain by Bob 
Sidwick of Bristol (0272 
550900). 

Bundled with a modified 
radio control box, it is 
designed to simulate the 
experience of real flight. The 
choice of aircraft displayed 
on the screen includes 
planes, helicopters, ducted- 
fan jets and a glider. 

RC Aerochopper closely 
simulates the experience of 
radio controlled flying by 
giving users the appropriate 
flight characteristics of each 
kind of aircraft plus such fea- 
tures as adjustable wind con- 
ditions and control response 
plus realistic sound effects. 

Current versions of RC 
Aerochopper cost £199 
including delivery. The 



Answer is on the cards 



Qctobw I WIS AMICAaiMPt ll\t. T 



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Everything you need for business 
and leisure computing will be 
available under one roof - with 
experts to help you make the right 
choice! 

The Computer Shopper Show is your 
chance to meet the dealers with the 
bargains, the manufacturers with the 
latest machines - and to take away 
the things you buy on the day! 

Auctions, demonstrations, 
competitions . . . everything that 
you've ever wanted from an 
exhibition will be happening at the 
Computer Shopper Show - the only 
show for the direct buyer and the 
ultimate computer shopping 
experience! 

And, with Computer Shopper you 
know you'll save moneyl 

Why not start right here! By ordering 
your tickets in advance you will save 
£££s! Simply complete and return 
the coupon with your payment or 
telephone the Credit Card Hotline on 
051-357 2961 to place your order. 



Prestdor Mierotinh 

Topbcc yoir order brProtd. Key *a9,ihcn6l4568383. Microlmk mm 
should lay MAG001. Pteuc quote your cmJrtord nwnber and 
your ful name tnd addrru *+*n you puce your order. 




The 

Computer Shopper 
Show 

Alexandra Palace, London 
10am-6pm Friday, November 24 
10am-6pm Saturday, November 25 
10am-4pm Sunday, November 26 



SAVE £££s WHEN YOU BUY 
YOUR TICKETS IN ADVANCE! 



Yes! Please send me my tickets (or che Computer Shopper Show' 

t 

□ Adult tickets at £3 (Save L I !) 



TOTAL 



□ Under 1 6s tickets at £2 (Save £ I !) 

□ Family tickets - admtts up to 2 adults. 

and 2 children - £9 (Save £5!) 

I wouM like to pay by - 
J Cheque mide payable to Database Exhibition! Ltd 
J Credit card □Access J Visa Expiry Date 

N» l I I I I I I I I I L-U 



Oped 

Name 



Address 



Postcode 



Please return your completed order form to - 

The Computer Shopper Show Ticket Office. Database Exhibitions Ltd. 

.^-^i* *^J!?*^ ™^J^J§* A765 

TELEPHONE HOTLINE 
Place your orders for tickets by calling 
051-357 2961 



Over 250 stands serving every 
major make and model - the 
ultimate computer hypermarket, 
packed with pre-Christmas 
bargains and offers. 
Incorporates the Amstrad 
Computer Show, the Atari 
Computer Show, the Electron & 
BBC Micro Show and much, much 
more! 

On-site car parking for hundreds 
of cars - ideal for taking away 
your computer bargains on the 
day! 

Excellent public transport network 
with courtesy coach link to the 
local British Rail station. 
Special show features and 
entertainment to make your 
shopping experience fun! 
Special discount tickets for under 
16s and family groups. 

JU foToiiyjrsfiJ 

Sponsored by 




Organised by DATABASE 
* Y EXHIBITIONS 



■AMIGA SCENE! 



J 



Amiga version will be avail- 
able later in the year either 
direct from Bob Sidwick or 
from a limited number of 
retail outlets. 

Starting up 
in France 

■"PHE Parisian Disc Com- 
1 pany (331 45 53 1053) 
has produced a Starter Kit 
for Amiga 500 owners. 

Labelled "a complete sol- 
ution pack designed for first 
time computer owners who 
want a diversified use of 
their Amiga", it includes the 
KindWords 2.0 word 
processor. Fusion Paint and 
three games for a UK price of 
£69.95. 

Up market 
video 

T ATEST launch by 
J-iApplied Systems Devel- 
opments (0724 200222) is 
MAXIgen which is being 
distributed by A.S.A.P. 

Costing £862, MAXIgen is 
a professional broadcast 
quality genlock/coder pro- 
viding twin RGB and 
composite video output 
channels for use with the 
Amiga. 

The unit comes with front 
panel controls and rear panel 
connections in a 19in rack 
unit. Desktop use is also pos- 
sible. 

PASE (Professional Anim- 
ation Sequence Editor) is 
another new product avail- 
able through ASAP. A full 
function animation creation 
and editing program for 
Amigas, it costs £75. 

50 words 
for a penny 

THE first thesaurus for the 
Amiga, K-Roget, has 
been launched by Kuma 
Computers (07357 4335). It is 
based on the Longmans 
Pocket Rogets Thesaurus 
and contains more than 
150,000 words and phrases. 
Keyboard, function key 



Commodore's profits fade 



ANNOUNCING quarterly 
losses used to be a 
regular chore for Commo- 
dore's public relations 
people. Three years ago the 
company pulled itself out of 
the doldrums and started 
making profits. 

fust as people were start- 
ing to lose track of how long 
it is since Commodore made 
a loss the company turns one 
in of $8.9 million (including 
a tax rebate) for the three 
months lo )une 30, 1989. 
According to Carden Welsh, 
the company treasurer, the 
last time Commodore 
reported a loss was March 
1986. 

Overall the company still 
had a good year, making 
$50.1 million. Irving Gould, 
Commodore's chairman - 



famed for his collection of 
ancient Japanese ivory - said 
that the fourth quarter losses 
were a result of the stronger 
US dollar and a softening of 
demand. 

Since most home com- 
puters are sold at Christmas, 
it is not surprising that the 
period from April to June 
was not hugely successful. 
UK companies usually 
announce results every six 
months, splitting June to 
December and January to 
|une so that both halves 
reflect the best period. 

Some of the losses can be 
attributed to reinvestment. 
Commodore has recruited a 
lot of new technical and mar- 
keting staff in the US. big 
advertising budgets are plan- 
ned for PC and Amiga trying 



to establish the Amiga as 
both a fun home machine, 
and an industrial work- 
station with Unix and high 
resolution graphics. 

None of the losses are 
attributable to Commodore 
UK, which under the lead- 
ership of Steve Franklin has 
seen a dramatic rise in prof- 
its, winning a sizeable share 
of the PC market and routing 
the Atari in the battle for 
home users. 

Commodore is still 
battling with the US taxman 
over what it owes, if 
anything, for previous years. 
This quarter's tax rebate 
comes from countries where 
Commodore is not in dispute 
and, unfortunately, cannot 
be seen as an indication that 
the problems are sorted out. 



and mouse control options 
are built in to give the user a 
choice of operation. In addi- 
tion to the standard 
thesaurus features, a 
phonetic spell checker is 
incorporated which traps 
words typed in as they sound 
rather Uaan as they should be 
spelt and offers possible 
words. 

The Amiga version of 
K-Roget is being launched at 
a special price of £29.95. 

Type it in 
with Mavis 

MAVIS Beacon can now 
teach typing to UK 
students with an Amiga. 
After some delivery prob- 
lems, the well-known 
American typing program 
Mavis Beacon Teaches 
Typing is being distributed 
in the UK by Mindscape 
International (044 486 545). 

Published by The Soft- 
ware Toolworks, it uses arti- 
ficial intelligence techniques 
to provide what is claimed to 
be the most comprehensive 
typing tutor available. 

The course is structured to 
match individual student 
profiles with up to 21 dif- 
ference progress charts to 
check skill development. 




Tutor Mavis 

The results of these progress 
charts are analysed using the 
built-in artificial intelligence 
system to produce the next 
set of exercises. 

Guide hands show 
students the correct finger 
positions at all times. Speed 
and accuracy meters are dis- 
played on screen during 
exercises with a summary at 
the end of each set of work. 

The Amiga version costs 
£29.99. 

Big drive 
in schools 

PLANS to make the Amiga 
a vital tool for thousands 
of youngsters with special 
education needs will take a 
giant step forward this 



month. Commodore's national 
sales manager for education 
Peter Talbot has told Amiga 
Computing that a concept 
keyboard for the Amiga is on 
target for the start of the new 
academic year. 

This will provide the prin- 
cipal hardware opening for a 
flood of special education 
programs to be converted to 
the Amiga and will be a large 
boost to Commodore's aspir- 
ations in this market. 

The latest development is 
the result of lengthy discuss- 
ions between Commodore 
and Martin Littler, special 
needs coordinator of the 
North West SEMERC (Spe- 
cial Education Micro Elec- 
tronic Resource Centre) 
which works on behalf of the 
National Council for Educa- 
tional Technology. 

Martin is keen to see his 
centre's impressive list of 
educational programs con- 
verted to the Amiga and 
Peter Talbot has echoed his 
enthusiasm. 

Use of Commodore's BBC 
emulator, other minor 
hardware problems and 
prin- 
cipally the need for a concept 
keyboard have formed the 
basis of the discussions b«i 
Peter Talbot says Como** 



October 1989 AMIGA CDKtPtTV* 



■AMIGA SCENE! 



A touch of 

COMMODORE has had a 
history of problems 
with television advertise- 
ments. In the US the com- 
pany produced an 
advertisement using 
Amigas. They were 
screened on MTV which 
uses high resolution 
commercial workstations 
for most advertisements. 
As a result the Amiga 
didn't look too hot. 

Over here Commodore 
produced the splendid 
teddy bear advertisement 
using both the Amiga and 
Iris workstations at Digital 
Pictures. 

Atari complained to the 



the Star Wars 

Advertising Standards 
Authority (ASA) that the 
commercial gave the 
impression that the whole 
ad was produced using the 
Amiga. 

This is of course 
complete twaddle, you 
might as well say that the 
ad gave the impression that 
televisions have little 
teddies inside, but there 
you go. 

Atari complained (not 
that it was scared or 
anything) and the ASA, 
lacking the necessary spe- 
cialist knowledge, fell in 
line. This year we may see 
the ad with a line which 



for adverts 

explains that the graphics 
were not produced on an 
Amiga. Commodore US 
has pulled off something of 
a coup, in getting George 
"Star Wars" Lucas to 
produce a series of four 
commercials. 

Rumour has it that his 
company, Lucasfilm, has 
turned down similar job 
offers in the past, but 
George has an Amiga and 
likes it so much that he 
agreed to the commission. 

The commercials have 
been scheduled for prime 
time television to promote 
the Amiga to home users 
across America. 



dore's help will not cease 
there, 

"Special education is an 
area where we feel we have 
got a lot to otter", he said. 
"We will be having on-going 
discussions with Martin Lit- 
tler about how Commodore 
can help in a number of 
areas. What is certain is that 
we will be playing an 
increasingly important part 
in this field. 

"We expect to have the 
concept keyboard for the 
Amiga working for the start 
of the next academic year. 
We have got it working with 
the emulator at the moment 
and we are delighted to co- 
operate with Martin and his 
staff. 

With its power, the pos- 
sibility of speech synthesis, 
sound creation capabilities 
and its general ease of use, 
we feel the Amiga has a lot to 
offer to special needs edu- 
cation". 

Equally enthusiastic is 
Martin Littler whose 
resource centre is one of only 
two such bodies now left in 
the country. 

"Once the concept key- 
board is available for the 
Amiga, we would like to see 
our whole range of software 
converted for use on that 
machine", he said. 

"With the new programs 
we are about to bring out, we 
will have 43 packages spe- 
cially designed for use in 
schools and if there is 
someone out there who 
would like to help in conver- 
ting them to that format we 
would be happy to pay 
them". 

The North West SEMERC's 
Blue File list of software has 
enjoyed singular success. 
Within 12 weeks of the first 
catalogue being published 
last April sales had reached 
£11,500, with each package 
selling at £1.75. 

"This has surprised us 
because we did not set out to 
do this for financial success, 
but as a support service for 
the NCET", said Martin. 

Also available from the 
resource centre is the Special 
Needs Top Thirty, a collec- 
tion of software compiled on 
the advice of special needs 
coordinators in 60 English 
and Welsh education 



authorities and five Northern 
Ireland boards. 

Many of these programs 
have the advantage that they 
are frameworks within 
which the teacher provides 
the content to meet uSe needs 
and abilities of particular 
children. They have been 
developed by both edu- 
cationalists and software 
houses. 

The North West SEMERC 
is based at Fitton Hill, Rosary 
Road, Oldham, OL8 2QE. 
Tel: 061-627 4469. 

It's showtime 
again 

GLOBE-trotting Amigans 
will have a busy time 
keeping up with all the com- 
puter shows in November. 
The first European AmiExpo 
is to be held in Cologne, Ger- 
many on November 10, 11 



and 12. It will feature a 
number of major American 
and German exhibitors. For 
more details contact Joe 
Lowery at AmiEXPO. the 
New York-based organisers 
on 0101 212 867 4663. 

Closer to home there are 
two shows lined up which 
will interest Amiga users. 
The first is a collaboration 
between Commodore and 
Database Exhibitions while 
the second is a Database 
exhibition sponsored by 
Computer Shopper maga- 
zine. 

The Commodore Christ- 
mas Computer Show, to be 
held at the Hammersmith 
Novotel from November 17 
to 19 will be an up-market 
affair. There will be no time 
to relax, because the 
following week (November 
24 to 26) sees the Computer 
Shopper Show '89. 

This will be a big event, 
encompassing Acorn, Atari 



and Amstrad machines as 
well as third party Amiga 
suppliers, so you will be able 
to go along and sneer at the 
machines which don't have a 
blitter. It should also be a 
great place to pick up some 
bargains. 

MIcroLink 
cuts costs 

MICROLINK telex users 
will have some good 
news when the electronic 
mail service quits Telecom 
Gold in favour of the Istel 
network on October 1. 

Charges will be reduced 
by 20 per cent for the many 
businesses still using telex 
rather than fax. This will be 
particularly beneficial to 
people using international 
telex to contact countries 
where fax has not yet 
become established. 

"For regular telex users 
the price cut could more 
than offset their MicroLink 
subscription", said the head 
of the service, Derek Meakin. 
"MicroLink will continue to 
offer all its existing incoming 
and outgoing telex facilities 
including personal telex 
numbers for incoming 
messages. 

"On top of this, the service 
will be one fifth cheaper, 
making it far and away the 
most economical method of 
using telex*'. 



Programmers do it in Paris 

CONTINUING its policy of supporting Amiga 
developers worldwide Commodore plans to run a 
course for programmers in Paris. Previous developers 
conferences in Washington. California, Nottingham 
and Frankfurt have been well received and 
introduced many programmers to the finer points of 
programming the machine we know and love. The 
conference will have lectures in English and is sche- 
duled for next February. For more details contact 
Commodore-Amiga Technical Support on 0628 
770088. 



10 AMIGA COMPUTING October 1989 




ReadySoll would like to welcome 
routo the Macintosh*. 

Untrf now, the Macintosh* was a drslani wor to 
4*ed with high quality productivity software, 
^accessible to the Amiga owner 



Mac 4 tO"nat disks may be used directly during Mac' emulation Without an Apple* drive connec- 
ted, the included transfer software allows you to convert Mac' disks to A-Max tormal which may 
then be used with standard Amiga drives (thrs option requires access to a Macintosh*) 



A-Max features include: 

• Compare wi* tie A500. AtOOO. and A200P 

• Supports me use ol the Amiya "louse, wytwa 
3 5' Qtives. senai and paiaiW pods doling Wk" 
emulation 

• Roads Mage &K"arxlSpedre , "(»-tonn3t. Ai* 
Sr Mac* enWaKtt) 

• Supported video mooes include 640 ■ 400 ti'**» 
ced|.640 * 200(w*9cn*ngl 512-342 (Mk' 
standard see. "toiaced) and V)08 ■ BOO wt> F* 
A2024 or MomWm V*^ memm 

• Uses d- awkiatte Am.oa RAM (Mng Mac" 
emulation 

• Bu4-m Apple' Image*!*!' rniMfcon ta» 9 and 31 
P** Epwn* gompalibe niinlw, 

• Tromlei software to conwn* hes twn AnnoaDCtt 
b and bom A-Mlx arm M.K ' dis* toimafc IM* ' 



But ReadySofl has changed all thai. 

Now, with the introduction ol A-Max, you will 
be able to take advantage ol the Macintosh* 
joftwarc being used m ottices around the world 
without giving up your Amiga software. 



A-Max is a hardware and software combma- 
ton that runs most ol the p'oduclivtly software 
tia! has made Ifte Mac' a success. Atl you have 
to supply are Macintosh' 64K (Mac*) or 128K 
Mac Pius*) ROMs. Once the ROMs are 
ed. Macintosh* software will run i" ' 
«*ed on your Amioa A v.:> ■ 
plugs into the Amiga's external disk drive port 
and nas connectors tor an Apple' external dnve 
and additional Amiga drives. It an Apple* 
800K external disk drive is connected. 



I 

band t28K Ho** 



ONLY 



£134.95 



, MacPaint' WtcWrV 
MicUiaw' (1 &2l, PageMaker' il2i MicTe^i' 
a*i sysfern dw versons isftne system uV*i 
I28K ROMsl and ««st ome pmduclvily koNmb 
A Mai may not run a" game*, and Mm* loflwa* 
Annua hwd d"vt*s citniiut be uwd during Mac* 




COMPATIBLE WITH THE A500, A1000 AND A2000 




¥ 

f 

f 
f 
f 
f 

w Adjustable 
T record trig le-rel. 

ONLY £79.99 please 



A lop quality stereo sampling 
system at a realistic price. 

100% machine code software for 
realtime functions. 
HIRes sample editing. 

Realtime frequency display. 

Realtime level mctera. 

Flic* saved In IFF formal. 



V Variable sample rate * playback 
* speed. 

tt Separate scroll line waveform 

windows ft room function with Edit 
windows for floe accurate editing. 

■ 3D shot of sound waveform. Wave 
editor to design your own 
waveforms or adjust existing ones. 

m Microphone ft tine input 1 /*" Jack 
ft Din connections. 

0 Software files can be used within 
other music utilities. 

STATE A500/1 000/2000 



TO COMPLEMENT THE SAMPLE 
STUDIO THE 

OATEL JAMMER GIVES TOU A 5 
OCTAVE 

KEYBOARD TO PLAT ft RECORD YOUR 
SAMPLED SOUNDS 

FEATURES:- 

0 4 track sequencer up to 9999 events. 

4) Tempo ft Beat controls. 

0 Mixer Controls on Instruments. 

SJ Load ft Save sequence. 

0 Works on standard IFF Ale sounds. 





DATA 
ACQUISITION 



V 

f 
f 



Full Midi Interface for ASOO/IOOO/ 
2OO0 (please state model). 
Compatible with most leading Midi 
packages (including D /Music). 
Midi In - Midi Out «3 • Midi Thru. 

Fully Opto isolated. 

INLY £34.99 




ONLY £99.99 

PLEASE STATE A 500/1000/2000 



^ Turn your Amiga Into a sophisti- 
cated measuring Instrument 
capable of measuring a wide range 
of data Inputs. 

V Sample ft display events from 
microseconds to hours- with 
amplitudes from mlllvolts to SO 
volts. 

^ A Hardware/Software package with 

very high spec, including:- 
DIGITAL SCOPE DISPLAY - 2 channel 
Inputs. Manual or continues display. 
Tlmebaac SOOms/dlv to 20us/div- 
accurate to 5%. 

^ 6 bit flash conversion gives 2 

million samples/sec. 
PLOTTER DISPLAY 

V Time base range 1 sec to lOhra per 

plot. 

All features found on units coating 
thousands of pounds. 



VIDEC 
DIGITISEI 



A TOTAL MIDI MUSIC 
PACKAGE 



PRINTER LEADS 



25 pin D' to 36 way Centronics 
parallel lead. 1.2m length. 
A5O0 or 10OO, please state. 



ONLY £8.99 

UNBEATABLE VALUE PACK - THE YAMAHA SHS 10 FM MIDI 
COMPATIBLE GUITAR-STYLE SYNTHESISER, THE ACTIVISION 
MUSIC STUDIO SOFTWARE PLUS THE MIDIMASTER INTERFACE 
TO CONNECT TO YOUR COMPUTER SYS 



SAVE OVER 




RJLP. over £175 



YAMAHA SHS 1 0 FM 
SYNTHESISER KEYBOARD 

V Superbly styled guitar-type 
keyboard with shoulder strap. 
Top quality brandnamc. 

2.5 octave keyboard. 

28 built-in Instrument and rhythm 
choices. 

Uses FM synthesis. 
Full MIDI standard. 

ACTIVISION 
MUSIC STUDIO 

w A full feature MIDI Recording 
* Studio. 

V A multl channel sequencer with 
realtime Input and full editing 
facilities. 

y Completely menu driven - full 
Mouse control. 



V 256 x 258 display with 16 grey 
T levels. 

V Realtime frame grab l/50th 
second. 

S Takes standard composite Video 
Input from camera or Video 
recorder. 

Screen update 1 frame per secoa 
single, continuous or buffered 
display. 

fS Load. Save facilities Including O 
* Save. 

w Edit picture, cut. copy, paste am 
undo. 

^ Special effects, reverse, negative 
mirror, compress, etc. 

V Increase the width of the display 
to 920 z 256 automatically or 
manually. 

V Plugs into the parallel port of ym 
Amiga 1000/500/2000. 

V Cornea complete with Its 
power pack. 

ONLY £89.99 



y Very simple to use. 

MIDIMASTER INTERFACE 

V This unit connects your compute 
to any MIDI instrument. 

V Fully Opto isolated - MIDI IN, Mil 
OUT, MIDI THRU. 

^ Just plug in and go. 

FREE CABLES 

9 3 metre long MIDI Cables • 
completely FREED 
(normally £8.99). 



FOR ONLY 

£99.99 

NO MORE TO BUY!! 



AMG 4 




■ 




y Slimline extra low profile anil • only 6" long! 

%y Top quality fully compatible drive 

mechanism, 
y Throug hport allows daisy chaining 

other drives. 

V A superbly styled cue finlahed In 
Amiga colour*. 

*f 1 meg unformatted capacity. 

V Good length cable for poaltlonlng 
on your deck etc. 

ONLY £1 29.99 twin drive 

ADD C5 FOR COURIER DELIVERY IF REQUIRED 



EXTERNAL DRIVE SWITCH 



y Switch In/out of external drlvea. 

■ Save on memory allocated for 
drives not currently In use. 



DPI ft DF2 controlled. 
■E Flta between computer ft driver!*) 

ONLY £9.99 




9 Boost tbe output of your Amiga In 

glorious stereo 
y 30W + 30W power amplifier. 

^ 5 band graphic equaliser. 

y Complete with cable* for A900/ 

A1000/A2000 models, 
y Slimline colour matcbed metal 

case with built-in main* power 

unit. 

y Headphone socket 

0NLYC59.99 









MATCHING 1 
SPEAKERS | 



REPLACEMENT 
MOUSE 



^ High quality direct replacement for 

mouse on tbe Amiga. 
V Teflon glides for smoother 

movement. 
S^ Rubber coated ball for minimum slip. 

Optical system counting • BOO/mm. 



Special offer free? mou»tf 

mat ♦ mouse house 
(worth £7.99). 

ONLY £29.99 

COMPLETE 



speaker units In die-cast 
aluminium abelf enclosures, 
y 30 Watts 8 ohm each. 

ONLY £39.99 pair 





LOW COST BAR 
CODE READER 



» 

* 
t 



Model 420. high performance, low 
cost Bar Code Reader. 
Works with any Amiga /8T computer 
system [please state which) via the 
RS232 interface. 

Features s built-in self-testing 

function. 

Can read codes EAN. UPC. Inter 
leaved 2 of S. Code 39. CODABAR. 

Comes complete with wand, ready 
to go. 

Features s diagnostic Indicator. 



ONLY £189.99 



y Available with/without calendar/ 

clock option, 
w Simply plugs Internally Into A500 

slot. 

S Switch In/out with switch supplied. 
Pitted In minutes - no soldering etc. 

V Accepts 4 1356 DRams [scro K 
T fitted). 

V With calendar/clock onboard time/ 
date automatically booted. 

^ Battery backed to retain time/date. 

ONLY £19.99 

FOR standard card to 

AC CEPT S12K 

ONLY £34.99 

FOR VERSION WITH CLOCK/ 

CALENDAR 

NO THESE PRICES ARE FOR BOARDS 
WITHOUT RAM CHIPS. PHONE 0783 
744707 FOR RAM PRICES. 
PHONE FOR LATEST FULLY 
POPULATED BOARD/ RAM PRICES. 



GENISCAN GS4500 AMIGA 




An easy to handle Handy Scanner 
featuring 105 mm scanning width at 
400 dpi resolution enables you to 
reproduce graphics A test on your 
computer screen. 
Adjustable switches for brightness 
ft contrast. 

A powerful partner for Desk Top 
Publishing. 

With Oenlscan you have tbe ability 
to easily scan Images, text ft 
graphics Into the AMIGA. 
Printout for 



▼ 



Powerful software allows for cut ft 
paste editing of Images etc. 

Save Images In suitable format for 
most leading packages Including 
DELUXE PAINT etc. 

Package Includes OS4500 scanner. 
Interface ft Scan Edit software. 

Unmstcbed range of edit/capture 
facilities simply not offered by 
other scanners at this unbeatable 
price. - BB _ B _^__ saw 



SPECIAL OFFER 

COMPLETE WITH DELUXE PAINT II A 
DELUXE PRINT FOR ONLY £1 89.99 

INC LU DING HARDWARE/SOFTWARE 



fins ^gtsf j- 

\ > IK* 



BY PHONE 


BY POST 


FAX 
0782 744292 


o-z? \m 


ixxl 


0782 744707 

24hr Credit 
Card line 


Send chequea/POe made 
payable to 
"Datel Electronics" 


UK ORDERS POST FREE 
EUROPE ADD £1 
OVERSEAS ADD £3 



BE E> WITTON 48 KRS 



HOW TO ORDER 



• • • 



PRICES AND SPECIFICATIONS CORRECT AT TIME OF PRESS 
AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE 



CALLERS WELCOME • Please reserve goods by telephone prior to visit 




DATEL ELECTRONICS LTD., FENTON INDUSTRIAL ESTATE 
GOVAN ROAD. FENTON, STOKE-ON-TRENT. ENGLAND. 


SALES ONLY 
0782 744707 


TECHNICAL ONLY 
0782 744324 



AMQ4 






' Air 



The Joker lands late 



BATMAN'S filofax is on 
the blink. The film 
wasn't due to arrive until 
Christmas, but Warner 
Brothers decided to bring the 
UK release forward to the 
summer. 

While batfans rejoiced 
countrywide, the pro- 
grammers at Ocean groaned. 
Beating the Dark Knight to 
the screens would be impos- 
sible, but they could give it a 
try- 
Even with the game set for 
release a month after the 
film, things are tight. So the 
programmers in the base- 
ment at Ocean are 
hammering away at their 
keyboards. 

The game is split up into a 
number of scenes which 
follow the plot. Giving too 
much away would ruin the 
film. The barest essentials, 
then: 

There are a couple of 
levels in which you must 
take on armed baddies, 
whose gunshots ricochet off 
your body armour. 

You use your Batrope to 
leap around a chemical 



Give us a view 



PICTIONARY is a game 
played in a similar way 
to charades, only instead of 
acting out a word or title you 
and your team mates must 
try to guess the various 
words by sketching clues to 
each other. 

The game features an 



works at the beginning, and 
a church at the end - a lad- 
ders and platformy scene 
which has been beautifully 
drawn. 

You must find the girl and 
rescue her from the Joker. 

To get from place to place 
you partake in a Crazy Cars 
style driving scene, piloting 
the awesome Batmobile 
towards the spooky Gotham 
City skyline. 

Turning corners needs 
some deft action with the 
Batrope, 

The game, and particularly 
the fine graphics, conjure up 
the underworld feel of the 
film. 

The programmers worked 
from the script but couldn't 
get a full taste of the atmos- 
phere without seeing the real 
thing. 

Warner Brothers refused 
an early screening, so Ocean 
sent two of the programmers 
to New York, where the flick 
had opened. 

They saw it twice over the 
weekend, hopped on a plane 
and got back to their devel- 
opment system. 



innovative (it says here) 
graphics package, which 
includes solid broken and 
dotted lines of various 
thicknesses, rectangles, cir- 
cles, ellipses and a number 
of fill patterns. 

Out on the Domark label, 
price £24.99. 





/ don I know why he is smiling. Ocean has a deadline to meet 



TWO new programs from 
Bullfrog - the authors of 
Populous — are on their 
way. 

The first is Warmonger, 
a 3D vector graphics game 
with many of the strategy 
elements for which 
Bullfrog is so rightly 
famous. 

The name of the game is 



likely to change, since the 
program is not scheduled 
for release until well into 
1990. 

Further off than that is 
Populous 2, which adds 
loads of features to the 
best selling Amiga game 
ever, including more 
strategy and tlw ability to 
zoom in on the landscape. 



All in a good cause 



'ICTURIST-Spring 
O GUESS -Anyone 



Pictionary in practice 



TIME 
TVPErAll Play 



WEARING a lighter 
shade of green than its 
usual khaki. MicroStyle - a 
MicroProse label - has 
learned up with Greenpeace 
to produce Rainbow 
Wtirrior, a game which is 
environmentally aware. 

Unfortunately the game 
isn't up to MicroPros*' s 
recent excellent form, hut it 
serves Greenpeace's motives 
admirably . 

As a protest organisation. 



Greenpeace's function is to 
raise the level of awareness, 
and the game tackles seven 
aspects of the work the 
organisation does - from 
saving whales and seal cubs 
to protesting against nuclear 
power and acid rain. 

The actions are written up 
in an excellent manual 
which explains the reasons 
behind and details of many 
of the protests Greenpeace 
hah taken part in. It is light 



4 amica court n\(; om.^iwi 



All the latest news on 
the games software scene 



Bombs away 



FRENCH air traffic con- 
trollers may have a hard 
time keeping tabs on what is 
filling their airspace, but that 
is a doddle compared with 
what is lined up on the run- 
ways of various software 
houses. 

Digital Integration is lead- 
ing the way but it has bandits 
al 12 o'clock. 

Activision and Vektor 
Grafix are first to follow into 
the skies with Bomber. This 
allows you to fly missions 
over the US Mid West in a 
choice of aircraft, the MiG 
27, F-lll, two Tornados, the 
Saab Viggen and an F-15. 
You can also choose what 
you wish to fly against. 

By incorporating a huge 
number of polygons Vektor 
has produced realistic 
planes. There is a trade-off 
between speed and per- 
formance so you can elect to 
play with fewer polygons 
and have faster action. 

But there are more foes in 
(he sky. The game which sets 
rival software houses 
quaking in their bootblocks 
is Hawk from Electronic 
Arts, also known as F-117a 
Aggressor. 

The program has been 
under development at 
Argonaut Software for 18 
months, Amiga Computing 
printed the very first 
screenshot in June 1988. 

With as many as six people 
working on it at any one 
time, the result will represent 
about 10 years work for a 



F-JJ7* - an early 
fcreenshot. The name 
now features an 
amazing control 

panel by Herman 



/ 





ACE - a casully in the 
dogfight 



Bomber uses highly 
detailed planes 

single programmer. 

And it will be worthwhile. 
Using special Virus-style 
landscaping techniques and 
optimal mathematics. 
Argonaut claims it has the 
best basis for a flight simu- 
lator. 

Programmers with spe- 
cialist interests in 
aerodynamics, modern 
fighter aircraft and weapons 
have been recruited. The 
result should be aircraft 
which fly accurately and 
give a realistic performance, 
although when 1 got my 
hands on it for a sneak 
preview the final figures 
were being tweaked and the 



planes were still very 
twitchy. 

Ocean also has an entry for 
the air race. F-29 Retaliator is 
a futuristic flight sim which 
is still some way off. 

Looking a bit like Falcon, 
with stippled mountains and 
detailed cockpit graphics, it 
could be the surprise winner 
in the battle for air 
supremacy. 

The plethora of aircraft 
games could yield a casualty. 
Ace from Artronic uses some 
advanced maths techniques, 
but in the face of some stiff 
opposition it may have its 
wings clipped until later next 
year. 




and well written, with 
excerpts from The Green- 
peace Story. 

II blends the actions with 
instructions for playing the 
game and gives you a chance 
to get involved. 

There are plenty of com- 
puter games in which you 
Mve alien worlds, and even 
whole universes - Micro- 
Mvle has produced the first 
one in which you save the 
planet called Earth. 



The crew are far from frieniHv 



REVIEWED 



THIS MONTH 



100% Xenon 2 
92% The Promised 
Lands 

83% NightDawn 

82% Leonardo 

78% Journey 

1 II? £! endisb Freddv 

7i£ n T* 8 00(18 
/J% Barbarian II 

NmSX?* 01 ? of Wrath 
69% Astaroth 

49% Gemini Wing 

49% Indiana Jones 

46% Skate of the Art 
45% Castle Warrior 

42% The Champ 



MAX HACKS 



J Carrl. r Command 

• Eliminator 

• "'"tor Skoltor 

• Interceptor 

• Leonardo 

• Thundorblrds 



Gallup Chart 



Last 
Month 



Populous 
Electronic Arts 
£24.95 



Forgotten Worlds 
US Gold 
£19.99 



Kick Off 
Anco 
£19.99 



Falcon Mission 1 
MinorwB 
£19.99 



Silkworm 
Virgin/Sales Curve 
£19.99 




Dragon Ninja 
Ocean 
£24.99 



New Zealand Story 
Ocean 
£24.99 



Lords of the Rising 
Sun Cinemaware 
£29.99 _ 



Lombard RAC Rally 
Mandarin 
£24.99 




r 



October 19H9 AMIGA COMPUTING 15 



■AMIGA ARCADE! 



Here we go, here we go, here we go 



FOLLOWING hot on the 
shinpads of Anco's news 
that it is to produce another 
football game this season, 
there as been a rush of 
announcements and sign- 
ings. 

Krisalis has teamed up 
with Man Utd to produce a 
computer simulation with a 
club management section 
and arcade style action. 

So if you fancy yourself as 
manager Alex Ferguson, or 
want to take on the mantle of 
Mark Hughes, you'll be able 
to take your choice. 

The really ambitious can 
try both as a player-manager. 

The Amiga version will be 
the first to be released and is 
the only rendition of the 
game which vertically scrolls 
its five-screen-wide pitch 
thanks to the built-in 
hardware. The playing area 
is 600 pixels deep and gives 
an isometric view. 

The ref and linesmen will 
be on-screen the whole time 
watching for fouls, offside 
and sending off offending 
players. The trainer sits on 
the bench and pretends not 
to shout instructions. 

Krysalis claims that Man 
Utd is the most famous 
football team in the world. 
Detailed research (I spoke to 
two people) reveals that this 
accolade should go to Liv- 
erpool, a team which has had 
the license for a game tie-in 
bounce around several soft- 
ware houses. 

It now seems to have 
ended up in Ocean's penalty 
box. No details or release 
dates are available. 

The fledgling Empire label 
has taken a different 
approach to footie licensing. 
Instead of backing a team, it 
is marking a man. That man 
is Tottenham Hotspur sup- 
erstar Paul Gascoigne. 

Gazza's Soccer Simulator 
will use digitised images to 
"set new standards in sports 
simulations". 

One software house which 
is so confident of its footbal- 
ling prowess that it has not 
signed anyone is Impres- 
sions, or to be more accurate 
Impressions' new label, 
Plato. 

What an ancient Greek has 



to do with our national game, 
I don't know. But Super- 
League Soccer is the first 
Plato release. 

In a rare moment of mar- 
keting honesty the company 
admitted that this is "yet 
another football manage- 
ment game". But it claims it 



is nothing like any of the 
games currently available 
because it puts you in charge 
of a top-rate team, rather 
than making you struggle to 
the top. 

The game has a good pedi- 
gree, coming in part from the 
team which wrote Kenny 




Is there anybody there? 




YOU have been dragged 
along to a seance. The 
fortune teller is a fake, but 
that doesn't stop you from 
becoming embroiled in an 
eerie adventure as the mark 
of the shadow is placed upon 



you. This is the beginning of 
Electronic Arts' new role 
playing game, The Hound of 
Shadow, which captures the 
feel of the books by H.P. 
Lovecraft. 

With the mark upon you 



Dalglish Soccer Manager. 

With Ocean, Anco, 
Krisalis and Plato all ready 
for the opening whistle this 
should prove to be an inter- 
esting season, regardless of 
whether or not your screen is 
tuned in to your A500 or 
BBCl. 



Unclean code 



BETTING on films is often 
a risky business. Not 
only do you have to produce 
a game to meet someone 
else's deadlines, but you 
must capture the feel every 
bit as accurately as the cel- 
luloid. 

The Untouchables was 
released about a year ago 
and Ocean has the rights to 
produce a game based on 
gangsters and liquor during 
the prohibition. 

Ocean commissioned a 
game from a conversion 
company but the end result 
wasn't good enough. So in a 
very brave and laudable 
move it was cancelled and 
the game re-written. 

The move paid off with a 
great, playable game in 
which you play several of the 
stars from the film, each with 
different abilities. 

Look for it soon. 



there is only a limited 
amount of time in which to 
free yourself. Investigating 
the mark takes you around 
the world, previous experi- 
ences — perhaps your invol- 
vement in the American 
Civil War - will help. 

A pub in Norfolk and the 
reading room of the British 
Museum both contribute to 
the solution. 

A carefully constructed 
combination of role playing 
and adventure game, the 
code has been produced by 
Eldritch games with won- 
derful sepia graphics to 
reflect the atmosphere of a 
game set in the 1920s. Out 
soon. 



16 AMIGA COMPUTING October 1989 



Brave 




EMPIRE has changed reality. Tho 
world has become cubic, 
kobolds are good guys, it isn't really 
that far to the chemists and God isn't 
dead, merely having forty winks. 

Unfortunately, during his omnipo- 
tence's slumber a wicked arch-mage 
has taken over the world and several 
others besides. Now he has 
prevented the Sleeper from ever 
waking up. 

You don't know what you are 
going to do but you must stop him, 
otherwise... Well, il'd be terrible, 
wouldn't it. He might privatise water. 
He might introduce Poll Tax. Yes. 
you must stop him at all costs. 

That only leaves you with one 
problem, How? 

Fortunately at that moment some 
half-dead kobolds appear at your 
door, just back from a similar expedi- 
tion. Before they die they give you a 
device which will aid you in your 
quest 

Now it's up to you to brave the 
bandit-ridden roads, the freezing 
hills and snow demons, the trained 



BARBARIAN 



I UST when you thought it was safe 
I to step back into your loincloth, 
Barbarian II from Palace has arrived. 
And this time he's out for... well, 
probably much the same things as 
last time actually - a spot of death 
and destruction, all nicely rounded 
off with a great haul of treasure to 
improve his credit rating. 

Can't argue with that, 1 suppose. At 
least not lo his face. 

This time he's got help. There is a 
choice of playing the Dark Destroyer 
himself or his rather comely 
companion. Female barbarians? 
Gotta move with the times 1 suppose. 
Whether this move is to attract more 
female games players seems 
somewhat dubious after witnessing a 
few of her near-naked acrobatic feats 
with only her well placed jewellery 
saving her from exposure. 

An amazing opening sequence, 
even by Amiga standards, draws you 
into the game. Nice animated effects 
and sampled speech even for the 
"Insert Second Disc" request 

Why can't everyone put as much 
effort into this sort of thing? One 
doesn't mind so much rooting 



around the box and manuals and 
swapping discs when it is done in an 
interesting and entertaining manner. 

Each level consists of a maze full of 
undesirables almost begging to be 
hacked, slashed gouged and gene- 
rally inconvenienced. Not only must 



you find the exit, but you must also 
collect the two magic items if you ore 
to be able to withstand Drax - the big 
nasty - at the end of the game. 

The items certainly are magic. 
When you pick Ihem up they flash 
incessantly for some jolly good and 



arcane, if a tad annoying, reason. 

The various bad guys, or bad 
things more properly, all require a 
different technique to overcome. 
Enemies floating off the ground are 
unlikely to be affected by a swing of 
the sword at knee height. Similarly, 



IB AMIGA COMPUTING October 1989 




■GAMES! 



nnc t TT? 



ave n'dits 



archers in the capital, the denizens of 
Ac dwarven tunnels, the airborne 
attack of seagulls, the fiery fury of 
dragons and the terrible mind- 
pummelling wrath of (gasp!) the 
giant mice. Privatisation is beginning 
to sound better all the time. 

The game, like some starbom soft- 
wire offspring between Mercenary 
and Dungeon Master, gives you the 
three-dimensional character's-eye 
new of the terrain and relies solely 
on the joystick or mouse for all oper- 
ations. 

Unlike most of this genre, there is 
no fiddling about with icons, and no 
text entry. If you come across a loca- 
tion with the correct objects in your 
possession the game assumes you 
know what you are doing and 
completes the actions for you. 

This is a great bonus since not only 
can you sometimes get things right 
by mistake, and you are saved all (hat 
tiresome fiddling about typing and 
clicking and clicking and typing, 
trying to find the right combination 
of actions or phrases to bring about 




there is no point going for the neck if 
your opponent is only two feet tall. 

This means a separate strategy 
needs to be evolved to defeat each 
type of beast, more so than in other 
gjmes of similar ilk. A strong will 
and stern resolve, never mind the 
possible advantages of being stone 
deaf, will be needed to overcome the 
tabid assaults of the giant chicken, 
presumably recently escaped from a 
neanderthal Col. Saunders. 

Care must be taken not to let a 
uonster get your back against a wall 
or with a hole behind you. Look 
•round, find your own ground, 
because if you get trapped you 
tbould have listened to that nice 
insurance salesman who called last 
Thursday. 

Navigating the maze is fraught 
with problems, not the least of which 
an the large holes some unthinking 
workmen have left all over the place. 
You'll need to take a running jump at 
6ese. 

The other problem is that it all 
Harts looking the same: Didn't I pass 
fiat molten river and the skull on the 
stick a lew minutes ago? 



the desired result. 

Of course this might not appeal to 
the purists, but if you're after mono 
text-only sagas, why didn't you stick 
with your ZX80? 

Weapons. There are lots of these. 
You start off lobbing small stones 
and pebbles at people end up blast- 
ing them with lightning bolls. Ammo 
is usually collected from baddies you 
blow up on the way. Yes I did say 
blow up. Yes, with pebbles. No, I 
don't know why, but it's fun. Listen 
to me. here you are prancing round a 
cubic planet - it's no good going on 
at me about realism. 

Whenever you meet someone 
they're almost sure to be a bad guy, 
unless they look exceptionally old 
and feeble or exceptionally cute and 
helpless. Anyone else, waste 'em. 

The joystick, or mouse if you 
prefer, controls a crosshair in the 
viewing screen. Targeting with the 
cursor and pressing the button will 
fire the current weapon. When you 
pick up a weapon, if it is more pow- 
erful than the one you are using it 



Bsrharign II 

U4.H9 

Palm* 



Graphics 
Gamepla) 



IMITTT 










Hill 


IIP 


[TTb^H 1 1 1 1 



Value 



j j 1 1 | [ [ | 



mil 



Overall - 73' 



If you get hopelessly lost it is time 
to take a look at the poster that comes 
with the game. This won't help, but 
at least it will lake your mind of the 
fact that you're going to die in some 
horribly grotesque and totally unrea- 
sonable fashion. 

On the whole (he animation is 
nothing spectacular, with the excep- 
tion of the leaping sequences and the 
death scenes where our hero or her- 
oine slumps to the ground, usually 
followed by the victorious baddie 
celebrating over the prostrate ex- 
barbarian with a spot of sampled 
sound. 

Palace has made up for spawning a 
generation of bimbo marketed games 
by producing a worthy sequel to a 
good game. 

Green 



will replace the current one. 

The weapons' ranges vary con- 
siderably. With a simple sling you 
may be able to detect a baddie's hal- 
itosis, but with a longbow you can 
probably despatch them to that 
Rubick's Cube in the sky before 
they've even noticed you're in the 
neighbourhood. 

Unfortunately some of the larger 
weapons can take an age to load, so 
you may have to resort to hurling 
shuriken at an irate dragon or lead 
shot at a master magician. Nobody 
said it was going to be easy. 

It is vital to save the game every 
time you achieve something or pick 
up something new. The program has 
a very good load/save screen and it is 
possible to store upwards of about 20 
positions on the data disc supplied - 
the disc that the program runs from - 
a definite one- up on those adven- 
tures that have you swapping discs 
continually. 

The graphics are fairly good, and 
reasonably fast considering some are 
quite complicated. The people and 
creatures you meet are well drawn, 
although their movements can be 
jerky, which is very annoying when 
you are trying to ambush someone 
and he mysteriously transports right 
past. 

The explosions are good and are 
accompanied by agonising screams. 
The fact that they seem to be emitted 
by throttled pigs is neither here nor 
there. 

The puzzles are quite difficult to 
solve, but to be honest they often 
solve themselves. You will be aimles- 
sly wandering around some barren 
plain when you trip over a molehill 
and discover some magic boots. 



U4.UH 

Empire 



Sound 
Graphics 
Gameplay 
Value 







III 






i Limits 


nE 




III 



Overall - 76% 



Serendipity isn't in it. 

This also means you have to inves- 
tigate every molehill, every rock and 
every dragon dropping in every king- 
dom. Some things are not very 
important and only help to keep you 
alive (not important?) but others are 
vital to your quest. There is no way of 
going back when you suddenly dis- 
cover on the last level that you arc 
missing a magic toothpick. 

There are some good underground 
sequences and a tastefully decorated 
castle, both wisely placed to break 
the monotony of all those wide open 
spaces. 

It is a good idea to get inside before 
nightfall unless you've been eating 
lots of carrots because the sky gets 
dark. As a matter of fact, it all gets 
dark, including the bad guys. Doesn't 
stop them from attacking you though. 

Sleeping Gods Lie may lack some 
of the strategic thought of the more 
conventional adventures, but it has a 
certain payability that prevents 
boredom and frustration setting in. 

Although much of the game invol- 
ves endless traipsing over the coun- 
tryside, there is still something 
compelling about it which makes it 
all seem worthwhile, an elusive qua- 
lity which can turn an otherwise 
mediocre offering into something 
unusual which deserves a look. 

Green 




STRJT SLZX r * 







=£5SLE5 20 




STARS. U 






0W»T5. 5 






BOLTS. 5 






awous u 



He won 'I attack you, he'll just run away 



October 1989 AMIGA (X)MPt TT\*i 1* 



■GAMES! 



never 

'hrough ali of (hum. And if just 
* bomb is left... When the fuse runs 
«U Kaboom! It s KYAG time. 

1 don't give a damn if your Zappei 
« eradicate everything on the 
' n in a blinding flash of light. No. 

care I if ynur Side Shot causes 
» U to emit from the left and right 
■dt of your ship, 
•'ib! I spit on your Electrobalt. 
••bar. which sticks to your ship 
hold down the fire button. I 






ay lipball with your mines, 
IXeoites don't hate feel - Ed), laugh 
at your Speed-up stripes, and spit my 
rotting stumps of teeth at your Super 
Nash wan Power. 1 say Pah! to the tot 
of them. 

My Brachiopods will wiggle deep 
into your cars and suck out your 
brains. My crusty-skinned Trilobytes 
will shoot your paltry defences to 
pieces. The probing appendage of my 
Nautilus will launch indestructible 
mines into your path. The powerful 
radiation emitted by the time bombs 
has mutated these once harmless 



beings into crazed agreswrs. Tbey 
eat little boys like you for breakfast. 

I can't lose. You see I'm too fast, 
too smooth, too evil. And this lime 
I've brought with me the most 
awesome army of agents the Amiga 
computer has ever seen, coupled 
with sound effects to break your 
eardrums, Nothing can stop me, The 
universe will be mine. Mine, do you 
hear, all mine. 

And all crammed on In two discs 
with music by Bob the Bass. 

|eff Walker 



Sound 



/ lost my last life getting you this picture 



lllllllllll ll ll 

Gameplayj 
Value | 



Overall - 100% 





I wish I'd bought that sideways firing gun 



October 19H9 AMIGA COM 




■ G A M E S ■ 




NEW ZEALAND STORY 

Classic platforms and ladders 



TIME, there is never enough of it. 
Some days, as 1 re-read H, G. 
Wells' The Time Machine, I ponder 
on the possibility of lime travel, of 
the paradoxes, of what one could do 
if the past was mutable. 

1 was in one such mood of quiet 
contemplation when he who must be 
obeyed, gave me an innocuous 3.5in 
disc and said: "Review this, 
Earihling". 

Gratefully clutching this manna 
from heaven, I scuttled off lo the 
corner and donned my cap on which 
the word Reviewer was writ large. 

The disc drive whirred, the screen 
flickered into life, and something 
strange started to happen. Light 
blurred, colours streamed, time 
slowed, stopped, and then began to 
run backwards. The years rolled 
back, my midriff shrank to an accept- 
able size, a hairline receding faster 
than a Brazilian rain forest sprang 
forwards with a vengeance. 

The year was 19S4, with all its 
Orwellian connotations. The 
Olympics were starting in the city of 
the angels, it was the 169th 
anniversary of Wellington stuffing 
Napoleon at Waterloo, and the Great 
God Spectrum ruled the Earth. 

Ocean Software had worked some 
arcane magic and brought me back 
all those years to play New Zealand 
Story, a conversion of a Taito coin- 
op. 

You are a small fluffy chick out to 
cross the islands that make up New 
Zealand and rescue imprisoned poul- 
try along the way. The chickens you 
are rescuing obviously aren't in a 
batten* farm - there's only one victim 



per cage. Blimey, you could jam at 
least 50 more in there. 

Anyway, you are that small fluffy 
thing leaping around those plat- 
forms, that is a bow and arrow you 
are carrying, the defenders of the 
coup are armed in a likewise manner, 
and you do lose a life every time you 
get hit by one. It's more than the 
opposition gets though, so you 
should count your lucky feathers. 

Leap from platform to platform, 
head for the cage before the timer 
runs out and your pecking pal ends 
up as six Chicken MacNuggets. Koala 
bear-like things and all manner of 
small not so cute animals attempt lo 



get in the way, set snails on to you 
and fire arrows. 

Thankfully the first two levels of 
these things are pretty easy, always 
making sure you don't get barbecued 
by running into an electric fence. 

Every animal you kill is transfor- 
med into a piece of fruit, the collec- 
tion of which boosts your score. 
Great for you, not so good for them. 
Occasionally you'll hit an animal that 
leaves behind a new weapon. The 
first one is an unlimited supply of 
bombs, which explode with a crispy 
crunch. 

Just in case you were thinking this 
was all leapy-leapy. jumpy- jumpy, 



r 
r 

r 

r 




rri 





w s 




r 

| 

r 

n 



there are also aerial activities to con- 
sider. Clamber aboard a balloon or. 
as in level four, a flying bat appro- 
priated from a luckless bear, and take 
to the airwaves, watching out for the 
planes with engine trouble or 
hydraulic failure. 

The excitement is, of course, 
immense. This is state of the art plat- 
form action, with no colour clashing 
either. But then, as the disc flopped 
out of the drive, as I sharpened my 
piece of charcoal ready for the 
scribing to follow, Father Time 
started lo catch up with me. 

The Tories won another election, 
the release dates for Star Trek came 
and were left behind in the distant 
past, the hair fell apologetically on to 
my writing slate, empty beer cans 
appeared as if from nowhere, the 
belly resumed its previous portliness, 
and I was sadly back in 1989. 

But you can take that trip back in 
time, back to when Manic Miner was 
king. Be warned though, time is a 
precious thing, there never is enough 
of it. 

Duncan Evans 



Ml right Kiwe, my old fruit? 



\cu Zealand Ston 

C19M 

t li eao 


Sound 


i 


MM 


1 




Graphics 1 










Gameplav 1 




I 






Value 


i 


1 


II 


1 




2iJ 





22 AMIGA COMPUTING Qdobar 19H9 



WARNING ! 

Do not play this game 
if you are of a nervous disposition 





Distributed 




You are the Surgeon. 



Play Life & Death and you will have the responsibility of holding 
a human life in your hands as you cut into living flesh. 
In this - the world's first interactive medical movie - you'll enterthe tension-filled atmosphere c 
busy hospital. Talk with your patient. Read charts. Order X-rays, blood tests and other laboratory 
reports. And when the time comes . , . you will pick up the knife! 
In the operating theatre, your skill will determine whether your patient goes to recovery ... or the mortuary. 

Available for IBM and compatibles, Apple ll/Mackintosh, Amiga and Atari ST. 




N D S C A 



P 



For further information on Mindscape Products and your local dealer contact 
Mindscape International Limited, PO Box 1019, Lewes, East Sussex BN84DW. Tel. (044486) 545/547 



■ G A M E S ■ 



Burgling becomes a fine art 



LETS get one thing straight here - 
this game has nothing to do with 
that chap da Vinci, the Renaissance 
painter, sculptor, engineer, biologist 
and left-handed person. Instead, 
Leonardo is a very small thief who'll 
steal anything that's not screwed, 
nailed or taped down. 

The short attract sequence has him 
breaking and entering a house, 
accompanied by very high quality 
sampled sound. A valiant attempt is 
made to reproduce a digitised toilet 
flush; valiant, yes - accurate, no. 
Still, it is probably the first toilet 
flush to appear in a computer game, 
so we can let it pass. 

Leo's methods are curious. Instead 
of the usual dart in, grab and have it 
away on the old size U's as fast as 
possible, he likes to make a line with 
the goods first. Every job he does has 
three things to steal, and each slides 
freely when pushed, so a great deal of 
care must be taken when manoeuv- 
ring them. 



Each of the banks, museums and 
warehouses that Leo visits are littered 
, with rocks. A little out of the ordinary 
granted, but this is a computer game, 
so authenticity isn't at a premium. 

These rocks can be shunted about, 
or broken if they've nowhere to slide 
to. They can also be used to great 
effect to remove the rather both- 
ersome guards. There are always two 
of them. 

The bobby plods along horizon- 
tally before homing in vertically. The 
Boohoooh (a ghost) floats vertically 
towards you before homing in hori- 
zontally. This means that Leo is 
always being pursued, and if caught, 
it's another spell in the slammer. 

Thankfully, the guards always start 
off from the one place in each level, 
so if you can block that off, the rest of 
the level can be completed with only 
the (generous) time limit to worry 
you. 

Each level is about four screens 
full, with alt the important details 


















shown on Leo's tiny radar scanner. 
Unfortunately, there are many other 
helps and hindrances that Leo's 
homegrown and consequently dodgy 
scanner doesn't show. 

Wads of money he about the place 
- picking them up gives 1 ,000 points. 
Manholes give access to the sewers 
and quick point-to-point transport- 
ation. Dynamite returns the guards to 
the start, and the paralysing rock (?!) 
stops them in their tracks for a few 



/ nmanh 
£ 
S 




Overall - 82% 




/ wouldn't mind, bat I've got to share this cell with three ST programmers 



Watch oat for the Old Bill 

seconds. There are also handcuffs, 
which do as good a job as the guards 
in apprehending Leo. 

Every once in a while there appears 
a bonus level, which has a tiny time 
limit and hundreds of bonus pearls, 
not to mention the two guards. The 
idea is to get as many pearls as pos- 
sible in the time allowed; fairly 
predictable, no? 

In fact, the gameplay is essentially 
similar to the veteran arcade game 
Pengo. which spawned many look- 
alikes on the 16k ZX Spectrum. The 
similarity ends there - Leonardo has 
sharp, though small, graphics, very 
well executed sound, and a well 
planned set of levels. 

Speaking of levels, there are 
certainly plenty of them - 50 in all, 
with levels 10, 20 and 30 accessible 
via passwords. 

Leonardo is really a puzzle game, 



because quick thinking is more 
important than quick moving. A 
good puzzle game should allow the 
player a choice of start levels, but 
Leonardo's second and third levels 
are very hard. 

You could cheat and use the pass- 
words, but me giving them to you 
now would cheese the editor off, so 
you'll just have to work your way 
through. A pity, because levels 11 
onwards are very easy. I got them off 
Max, so check out his column this 
month. 

Considering Leonardo was written 
by a Swiss cracking crew, the effects 
are remarkahly understated and the 
gameplay far deeper than would be 
expected. A very solid, reliable game 
that holds together well, despite 
becoming a little too difficult at 
times. Worth a long, hard look. 

Stewart C. Russell 



24 AMIGA COMPUTING October 1989 



/ 



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X 



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THE CHAMP 

Floats like an anchor, stings like a moth 





IMAGINE you are a strong-jawed 
blond hero type. Got that? Ok, now 
imagine that your favourite princess 
gets kidnapped by the local evil 
baron. What would you do? 

Would you hop right on your space 
chariot and get on over there, 
casually disregarding any thoughts 
of personal safety as you blast 
through heavily defended castles dis- 
pensing molten laser death to all who 
upset your sensibilities? What do you 
mean, no? Of course you would, 
you're a hero. Aren't you? 

So much for the plot, what about 
the action? Chariots of Wrath follows 
the line of thinking that if you take a 
few old classics, spruce up the 
graphics a bit, work them into a plot 
and stick them all together you will 
get a great game. Sounds like a recipe 
for disaster, doesn't it? 

Funnily enough, in this case it 
seems to work. Perhaps not to the 
epic proportions Impressions may 
have hoped for, but then what do you 
expect using old ideas? 

The different levels are held 
together by a map screen. This is a 



WHILE the game loaded I read 
through the manual, which 
has an introduction so pseudo- 
intellectual that it may well make it 
into Private Eye's Pseud's Corner. 

It explains the story and rules of 
boxing - the game is endorsed by the 
WBA, incidentally - going into detail 
to such an extent that it reminds you 
that referees must keep their fin- 
gernails cut short for safety. It also 
explains the nine fouls, although 
none of them can be reproduced 
within the game. 

Once loaded you are presented 
with a menu from which you can 
select one or two players. Training, 
Hiscore Table, Show Wolrd (sic) 
Ranking, Create a data disc. Reset the 
World Ranking (spelled correctly this 
time), Sparring and Start Game. 

You enter into a bout of sparring to 
practice the moves. The joystick is 
used in a similar way to other combat 
games. The boxer can move left and 
right, defend his head, stomach and 
chest, plus he can dance. This invol- 
ves jumping up and down on the 
spot, rather than doing the Paso 
Doble. 

With Fire depressed you can 
produce hooks, straight punches, 
stomach punches and the ominous- 
sounding killer punch, which is 
rather like a fast cricket underarm 



bowl, continuing the motion through 
to end up with your fist under your 
opponent's chin. 

Best of all is the clinch, which 
results in both boxers grabbing each 
other in a passionate embrace which 
almost certainly falls on the wrong 
side of Clause 28. 

You score for each successful 
punch, although you're never really 
sure what your score is because the 
score board is so difficult to read. 

Each player has a morale and con- 
dition factor which decrease as each 
successful punch rings home. If they 
reach zero the boxer falls to the 
ground and is out for the count. 

Although I managed to knock my 
opponent down 17 times in the first 
round - why didn't the ref stop the 
fight? - 1 lost because the opponent 
wore me down with a succession of 
puny little punchettes. 

Following a knockout your are 
treated to a nicely executed TV-style 
action replay, complete with "motion 
blur" effect as (he boxer crashes to 
the canvas. 

The action replay isn't the only 
good thing in The Champ. The ref- 
eree darts about authentically, 
getting in the way - unfortunately 
you can't punch him - and when a 
boxer is pushed up against the ropes, 
the ropes wobble nicely. 



The sound effects are quite good. 
The referee says lots of referee-type 
things like "One, Two, Three, 
Four..." and as the punches connect 
they sound just as artificial as they do 
in the movies. 
Obvious effects like the end-of- 



round bell are missing. And 
music is dreadful. The box p; 
proclaims the fact that the game con- 
tains the theme from Rocky. It is so 
appallingly arranged that it would be 
a positive advantage to have a bad 
case of cauliflower ears. 




26 AMIGA COMPUTING October 1989 




GAMES 



mi A TITHTC 




Look back in anger 



rather nice graphical parchment rep- 
resentation with a large X indicating 
where you are, and therefore which 
stage you will be entering next. 

The first phase is a reaction timer. 
You have a crosshair sight, things 
pop up in the corridor in front of you. 
Do the obvious If you die you don't 
lose a life, so there is not much point 
to this level apart from amassing a 
large score to make you feel better. 

Next you must break out of the 
castle. 1 wonder where the idea for 
this level came from? It has some nice 
touches to it though. The standard 
style Arkanoid bonuses are present, 
with a couple of extras. The bricks 
are all nicely aged and the occasional 
arrow wiggles down from the battle- 
ments, intent on making its point. 

Taking a shortcut through the 
marshes leads you to shoot-'em-up 
land. Here you must pilot your 
spaceship through wave after wave 
of vertically scrolling marsh fiends. 
Sorry, did I say spaceship? I meant, 
of course, space chariot. Laser 
cannon, wingmen, shields and prob- 
ably speed stripes can all be picked 



As well as the boxing matches 
themselves, you can take a trip down 
to the gym for some training. This 
involves skipping and having a go at 
the punchbag. 

All in all, what could have been a 
perfectly good boxing simulation has 
turned out as something positively 
mediocre. 

The moves all work in the way 
described in the manual, but boxing 
is a sport of lightning fast reactions, 
putting together a series of orches- 
trated punches - Bill Conti said that, 
not 1 - and the game's response time 
to my energetic joystick wiggles was 
frankly not fast enough to give any 
real impression of a boxing match. 

You feel the game is waiting to 
catch up with you all the time. 

I. K. Nellwood 



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up by blasting the friendly orb that 
comes around every now and then. 

There is a cunning programmer 
plot to this level - the backdrops are 
sometimes so stunning that you take 
your eyes off the baddies just at the 
wrong moment, Watch out for the 
trolls throwing blackcurrant jellies. 

Later stages include a type of plat- 
form game and a version of 
Asteroids. All the stages are repeated, 
not in sequence but depending on 
which area of the map you are cur- 
rently in. 

This stops the game from 
becoming repetitive, as do the subtle 
changes in the layouts and graphics 
in each successive level of the samp 



type, with the exception of the reac- 
tion test and the Asteroids game, 
which are always the same. 

The backdrops and scrolling on the 
shoot-'em-up levels have clearly been 
done with a great deal of thought; 
there are even little retro-jet thrusts 
as you manoeuvre your ship. Disap- 
pointingly, the end-of-level monster 
is just an inanimate graphic which 
moves predictably and unrealis- 
tically. however nice it may look. 

Games of this type generally tend 
to have one really good stage - the 
rest becomes annoying and boring as 
you have to go through them to get to 
the best parts, rather like a D. H. Law- 
rence novel. 



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Gameplay 1 










Value 




Hill 


Overal 


I - 71 


'• 





Although undeniably the most 
effort went into the scrolling death 
stages, in Chariots of Wrath the other 
levels stand up quite well, giving it a 
nicely rounded and well constructed 
Teel. 

Green 




All in all. it's just another brick and ball 




You don 'I shoot this one, it's just French dressing 




October 1989 AMIGA (XJMPIITING 27 



■ G A M E S ■ 





IMK was when getting air meant 
going for a quick stroll, and a 
at bip skateboard was a short plank 
ilh half a skate at each end. Sheesh, 
en the very term getting air is a 
ttle old hat - all the juves groove to 

ospherics these days. 
Trouble is, skateparks are either 
_ ockel handkerchief affairs with 
bout 40,000 skaters per square 
metre, or huge, soulless places which 
osi a fortune to get into, So all the 
mad, bad and rad dudes have started 
uilding their own courses, wherever 
hey can, and with whatever Ihev can 
nd. 

Skate of the Art starts, against all 
possible odds and LRT's safety stand- 
ards (whichever is the lesser), on the 
latfonn of Earl's Court tube station. 
Various bits and bobs are arranged 
n a one-dimensional way along the 
lalform. for the special delight of 
your tittle skater. Tasteful brick 
ramps must be climbed at just the 
right angle and then coasted down 
gracefully. 

Manholes, and what look indist- 
inguishable from piles of books and 
ling cabinets, must either be 
umped or flipped, depending on 
eir size. 

There's no bonus for completing a 
urse without error - they can only 
e done in one faultless run oth- 
ise you lose a board and have to 
it through the whole tedious busi- 
ess of the little skater setting his 
board down at the start. 

Each of the courses is short. The 
real skill lies in timing the move- 
ments just right. The 20 courses track 
your progress through the skateways 
of the world, with various panoramic 
views and geographically relevant 
obstacles. 
The preamble to the game is quite 



What * stupid place to leave a skateboard 

well done, with a series of simple but 
effective attract screens. The controls 
are explained in rather a neat way. 
You are presented with a picture of a 
jovstick and your little skater in a 
small window. You move the joy- 
stick, the joystick on the screen 
moves, and the homunculus obliges 
with the relevant action. Simple, but 
neat. It kept me happy for half a 
minute or so. 

Although the attract mode works, 
the in-game graphics are not great. In 
fact, not to put too line a point on it. 
they're blocky and wouldn't be that 
remarkable on a C64. Most of foe 
screen is taken up by a huge 
upturned skateboard whose wheels 
move in sync with yours. It really 
only acts as a scoreboard. 



1 



The top hundred or so pixels do 
the interesting bit. The smoothness of 
the scrolling would be remarkable on 
a lesser machine, but we are in the 
real world, so I'll try not to mention 
it. The tunes can be lived with, but 
the game effects are limited to a 
rather pathetic "Aah!" as your skater 
wipes out again. 

By making the first course very dif- 
ficult until you learn it. and then 
making it a mere formality when you 
know how, Linel has killed any urge 
to progress with the game. It's too 
simple, too hard and too dull to 
charge ony more than £1.99 for. 
despite any effort that went into it 

Skate of the Art's only claim to 
fame is that it comes from Lie- 
chtenstein, (he little principality 



which is loo small to hold 
Bob and his bank account sum 
neously. Unless you're on a "Buy I 
chtensteinian" drive, 
atmospherics are better elsewhere. 

Stewart C. Ri 



Sk.tlrol Ihr \it 

Unci 




I TTTTT 



Overall - 4(i"„ 




M 



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(\istw Warrior 

llrliihinr 




CASTLE Warrior The name con- 
jures a warrior so hard that even 
battlements quake in fear. Real life, 
or what passes for it, is never that 
good; it's the old story of warrior 
breaking into the oppressive charac- 
ter's castle. 

Much the same idea as those 
classic mainframe games Hack and 



Moria. except this one's got graphics 
and sound. Pan back in time and 
space, in suitably impressive Hol- 
lywood style, to a land which has 
known peace for, well, at least 50 
years. 

Edelwulf the Great united all the 
tribes by the time honoured techni- 
que of whomping them until they 
gave in. 

Edelwulfs son, Edelred the Good, 
was more of the peaceful and wise 
ruler type. Well, maybe "was" isn't 
quite right - but it might be, soon. 
For the one malcontent. Zandor. just 
happens to have poisoned the king's 
food, and the end is nigh for Ed the G. 

For such a peaceful place, the 
king's son, Edred the Brave, is 
uncommonly handy with a sword. 1 
suppose it could be called a ferrous 




deterrent, the Olde Worlde answer to 
the ICBM. Considering Edred 's gol 
the musculature of an overcooked 
chipolata and has the delicate 
footsteps of a skipping elephant, he's 
pretty sharp with the old blade. 

Edred - that's you, if you're a little 
slow on the uptake - has vowed to 
bust into Zandor's stronghold and 
convince the old codger that handing 
over an antidote is a fair alternative to 
becoming the world's first human 
kebab. 

Zandor is hip to this ruse, and has 
rigged up a few surprises, The 
entrance hall is filled with evil crea- 
tures, all of which aren't good for the 
health. 

If the manual's to be believed, 
there's a large snake at the middle of 
the passage. Rice wine would be 
enough to take the feet from any 
hero, but it turns out to be a ravening 
typo in the shape of a snake which 



CASH 

Goodness gracioui 



wobbles at you while spitting 
fireballs. These kill you, but the idea 
is to kill the monsters by returning 
the fireballs. 

Zandor's castle isn't your standard 
Wimpey home. Once past the 
spacious entrance hall, it's through to 
an underground river, guarded by a 
dragon even more dangerous than a 
crazed rottweiler, A few well aimed 
spears gets rid of that pest. Once on 
to the river - where a canoe appears, 
thankfully - it's a dodge-the-nasties 
trip along the river. 

The only thing between you and 
Zandor is Zandor's house pet, |ibba 
the Monster. This guy is not nice. He 
must be hell on the postman. 

And Zandor isn't exactly a push- 
over, what with all the nasty spells 
he has a habit of chucking - a degree 
of agility is required here. After that, 
it's all over bar the residual monsters 
who pop up on the way home. 



TXTT%T A XT A T/^X 




THE man with the hat is back, 
and this time he's brought his 
niece. Well, not quite. But dontcha 
just love games developed with ail 
formats in mind? Isn't it a great feel- 
ing knowing that the game running 
on your immensely powerful Amiga 
sits just as happily on the Spectrum? 

Behove me, it shows. The multi- 
million blockbuster film has been 
rendered into pixel form by US Gold, 
and I have to say I'm not happy with 
the job that has been done. 

Now you must have seen the film, 
otherwise you wouldn't be interested 
in playing the game, buttering the tea 
shirt and eating the soundtrack 
album. This does help. Not with 
making the game any easier or play- 
able, but in convincing you that this 
is vaguely connected to the real 
thing, and thus a worthwhile game. 

Unfortunately it isn't a worthwhile 
game, Only a very worthwhile mar- 
keting exercise. But there you go. 
that's the software biz for you. 

Indiana Jones is on the last crusade 
(before infirmity strikesl to find the 
Holy Grail. He must gel to it before 
the Nazis do. The Grail goes from 
being the cup of everlasting youth to 
a power of great destruction if in the 
wrong hands. It sounds suspiciously 
like Raiders of the Lost Ark, and 



indeed it is. 

The computer version takes four! 
key sequences and makes them into 
the four levels of the game. 

Part one. accompanied by a nk*| 
little digitised piccy, casts you as the 
young Indy, played by River Phoenu 
of course. 

This Is sideways scrolling rocky 
platforms and ropes territory, 
populated with knife- thro wing 
indians, gun-toting hoodlums and 
falling stalactites. The idea, as on 
most of the levels, is to collect certain 
objects which enable you to progress 
to the next. Pieces of stone tablets, the 
diary, the cross and the Grail itself all 
have to be picked up along the way if 
you arc to save the world from the 
Nazi jackboot. 

The first level then, has you trav- 
ersing these caves, avoiding ttu 
indians, watching out for the plat- 
forms which crumble underfoot, 
picking up vital supplies of whips 
and torches - it gets dark otherwise - 
and swinging from rope to rope over 
water. 

A couple of points here. Firstly, the 
knife thrower hurls at random so 
luck largely determines getting past 
unscathed. Secondly, where there are 
two gunmen patrolling, you have to 
be lucky enough for them to appear 



30 AMIGA CUMPLfflNG Otiober 19H9 



■ G A M E S ■ 



ARRIOR 



all balls of fire 



Castle Warrior, if you took it all 
apart and analysed it, could be quite 
impressive. But when reassembled it 
just doesn't hang together. The 
subject matter has stood the test of 
time well, but the small, badly 
animated sprites on a tiny screen do 
not help. The sampled sounds are 
excellent, yet fit together to form a 
lune of truly astonishing artlessness. 

The only saving grace, soundwise, 
is the inclusion of Delphine's funky 
saxophone on the high score sheet. 
When you offset this against the 
exceptionally dire sound effects, the 
sound's a bummer. 

If you're after a Kick-the- 
Necromancer-in-the-Balrogs type 
game, Castle Warrior probably won't 
do anything for you. Mind you, after 
the rather astonishingly clever Bio 
Challenge, Delphine has set itself a 
hard act to follow. 

Stewart C. Russell 





What do you mean. / need an appointment? 




f n come to the end of my letter 

lume distance apart and not on lop of 
each other, otherwise it is impossible 
» get past them. 

One touch by anyone and you lose 
• Ufa. 

The final groan comes when Indy 
UIls from the ropes over the water 
Ktion - he doesn't sink beneath the 
waves, rather he falls in front of them 
rff the screen. Sloppy programming 
m what? 

Still, it is very difficult to get 



through the first third of level one 
without serious damage - stupidly 
hard in fact, when more rope play, 
knife throwers and fatal drops have 
to be considered. 

Then you get outside, have to leap 
on to the back of a speeding train and 
avoid rhino horns, mad giraffes and 
the usual bad guys before you get to 
the end. And that was the first level. 

The other levels are easier, with the 
simplest being the final one. There's 
more cavern play with rats to con- 
sider in level two, the Assault on 
Castle Brunwald. The castle is burn- 
ing and you must climb up the wall 
to part three. The effect of the fire 
dropping from the stone ceiling is 
feeble. 

The next level is slightly at odds 
with the film as it has you racing 
around the zeppelin, trying to escape 
by biplane. This bit was cut, so didn't 
make it into the cinema. There's a 
nice heaving effect where the screen 
slowly scrolls up and down to simu- 
late the airship's movement, but 
really the graphics are very dull here 
- it's just a maze thrash with the 
guards in the way. 

Only the climax of the game, the 
Get the Grail sequence, where a 
heartbeat representing lndy's dad 
slowly declines, captures any of the 



spirit of Indiana Jones. There's traps, 
a fair bit of leaping and a nasty 
buzzsaw to contend with. 

Graphically, Indy and the Last 
Crusade is only adequate. The 
playing area is fairly small, the scrol- 
ling a bit jerky and only the anim- 
ation of the characters worthy of 
note. 

Speaking of note, the music and 
sound effects are awful. 1 wish 
someone had told the programmers 
that a good gun effect doesn't mean 
you don't have to bother with the rest 
of the game. 

Indiana (ones and the Last Rites 
would have been a better title for this 
game. There's plenty of it but you're 
never going to see it unless you can 




Overall - 49% 



master the absurdly difficult first 
level. Sloppy programming adds to 
the miser)'. Maybe Indy should have 
brought his niece after all, H would 
have made things a little more inter- 
esting, 

Duncan Evans 




I've beard of sticking your neck out, but that Is ridiculous 



October 1989 AMIGA CXJMfl 



A splendid time 



HAVE you ever met a bailiff? 
They're the big men with very 
wide shoulders and little conversa- 
tion. They do not wear clown 
make-up and silly shoes. 

Freddy does. He has been sent by 
the bank to reclaim a $10,000 loan. If 
you can't pay him, your circus will 
become the foundations for a new 
property development. There is only 
one way to avoid this Rose Theatre 



fate - put on the deathest-defyingest, 
amazingest feat of circus try that the 
world has ever witnessed. 

There are six events. Do well 
enough in all of them and the circus 
will earn enough from ticket sales to 
carry the show on. 

Even from the lowest board of the 
high dive, the tub looks pretty small. 
On the way down you have to adopt 
a string of poses - emulating King 




Tut or meditating in the yoga pos- 
ition for instance. 

You fall straight, but in the tumbles 
between positions you drift off target. 
Frantic joystick waggling is the order 
of the day. As you move up the 
diving boards the targets get smaller. 
And they don't just look smaller - 
you end up diving into a teacup. 

Freddy might appear at any 
moment armed with a fan to blow 
you away, but this is tame compared 
with his later antics. While you are 
unicycling and juggling Freddy dis- 
tracts the seal - your ball-throwing 
assistant - with a fish. Then he adds 
some excitement of his own with a 
bomb. You must juggle it back out to 
survive. 

On to the knife throwing, which 
has shades of Operation Wolf as you 
try to pop balloons without turning 
your female assistant into a kebab. 
Freddy will help by throwing bombs, 
which puts you off your aim. 

My favourite event is the flying 
trapeze, not just because it stirs 



(trmini WlOH 
LHUIU 

I iivin (lumes 



Graphics 
Garaeplay 
Value 











[ 1 [ 1 j~j" 


■ 1 










ii 






■ 1 II 


ii 


mil 


- 


4!l% 





REVIEWERS' lives would be con- 
tiderably more difficult - or less 
easy, depending on honesty - if all 
games didn't come with a wildly 
fanciful plot. I mean, "waves of 
marauding aliens" sounds far better 
than "a row of four b litter-objects", 
doesn't it? 

And in this department, Gemini 
Wing is no exception. Especially 
when you can manage to use two of 
game roviewing's worst cliches in the 
one (preceding) sentence. 

The humour in the tale behind the 
game is rather like early rhubarb - 
forced. It would seem that 
Earth people have become a little too 



J 



It's Super Hang On time again 




xenophobic, and the rest of the uni- 
verse's sentient beings have decided 
to teach us a lesson. 

But of course there's the secret ship 
which can show those slimy bug- 
eyes what for, and you are piloting it 
Channel Z, or what? Possibly even 
Dullsville, South Dakota. 

After playing Silkworn you are 
probably waiting for another 
amazing, slick and playable arcade 
conversion from Virgin. Well you 
can carry on waiting for Ninja 
Warriors. This wasn't programmed 
by Randon Access, and it shows. 

The format of the game is one 
you've definitely seen before. You 
are a small ship facing up a 
downwards scrolling landscape. 
Things come down the screen 
towards you, wobble a bit, perhaps 
shoot at you or drop something, and 
then are shot or disappear. 

After a certain length of backdrop 
has scrolled by the small things 
vanish, to be replaced by one or two 
large things, which try to shoot you a 
lot, and then they get shot, or you get 
shot. 

That just about wraps up this par- 
adigm of plainness (thank you, Dr 






32 AMIGA COMPUTING October 1989 



GAMES 



ime v udranteed for all 



memories of Pitfall but because I find 
it quite easy. Match the swing of the 
next trapeze with the one your girl is 
on, and shout like taran as you press 
Fire. Later on you get to jump at 
flaming hoops. 

Switching back to the hunky male 
character, the tightrope would be 
quite straightforward - advance by 
pressing forward on the joystick, 
correct a wobble with left and right - 
I it weren't for Freddy. He'll cut you 
ui two by throwing a disc in much 
the same way as Odd fob did in 
Goldfinger. 

You can protect yourself with the 
balancing pole, but staying on the 
wire afterwards is a trifle lough. 

The grand finale is the human 
cannonball The bimbo smiles as you 
brace yourself. She carries on smiling 
as she tills the cannon with powder. 
The spotlight is reflected in her 
toothy grin as you climb on the 
barrel. 

Then when Freddy appears and 
plugs the gun with a cork does she 



grimace? Does she look worried as 
the whole lot explodes? Not a bit of it, 
she just keeps up her tabloid pose. I 
think I'm in love. 

Targeting the gun is more fun than 
A level physics. You have to move 
the net and balance the trajectory 
against the amount of powder. I 
wrote a program like this years ago. 
Sold five copies. 

For each round you are given a 
score. This comes in the best possible 
form: Money. You use the cash to pay 
off the bank and hopefully win the 
game. How much you win depends 
on a judging panel composed of 
slapstick clowns. 

Throughout the game the graphics 
are superb. Not just for the jaunty 
way they are drawn but for the 
cartoonist's tricks - like motion blur 
and rubber people - which makes 
watching as much fun as playing. 
New twists, the hysterical clowns 
and the sense of achievement when 
you complete a level, put you in the 
party mood. Invite some friends 



Fiendish Fnwft/t i fffr Yap ohm 

C29JIS 

MindsaitH 1 




Sound 



nmmn 



Graphics fTTT 

GunepJa] (7 



mn 



■n 



Valut 



Knowwhsl I mean, harry: 



Overall - 77% 



around and use the five player 
option! 

If there is a flaw, it is in the jug- 
gling. Not the round in which Freddy 
hands you a bomb, but the juggling 
between the three game discs. You 
soon get fed up having to remove the 
"Amazing Disc A" and replace the 
"Death-Defying Disc C" just so that 
some clowns can laugh at you. This 
is a symptom of the huge quantity of 
graphics the game uses. It is also 
boring. 

But Fiendish Freddy really is very, 
very funny to watch and play. I'd rec- 
ommend it to anyone with young 
children. 

Simon Rockman 




iath is an expensive business 



«oget. wherever you are) but for a 
few small details. There can be two 
players simultaneously. Like, serious 
innovation, or what? Instead of the 
utile capsules giving extra powers, 
they give one-shot superweapons, 
*m I getting old, or is the term 
smartbomb getting a little out of 
date? 

Gemini Wing does have some new, 
innovative ideas, though. Having all 
capsules you've collected trailing 
behind you is a bit one-careful 
swner in the car showroom that is 
computer gaming. Having them open 
t» be nicked by the other player is a 
Mi idea, and can generate almost as 
■ich animosity as a Treasure Room 
■-in "Shots Now Stun" in Gauntlet 

Also, this game doesn't have the 
jaal complement of bangs, pows, 
Awadu and zonks that every other 
•ediocre shoot-'em-up has - il 
'•msxs a wide variety of rather clever 
^jnes, but no real noise. Don't know 
■oout you, but to me, a shoot-'era-up 
■ithout noise is like... is like... is like 
fc :oiething without something else 
JMty vital, at any rate. 

At least the tunes are adequate, 
an especially nice line in electro 



mock-Tudor on the highscore sheet. 
The first level's tune bears an 
uncanny resemblance to the first 
level tune from Space Harrier, so 
there could be a Sound -an d-Feel case 
in it for Sega. 

Most of the graphics suffer from 
being rather small, being frequently 
made up tram units of two low-res 
pixels, which pushes them into the 
really quite exceptional (for an 
Amstrad CPC) league There are 
limes when there are so many ground 
emplacements and circling aliens 
that there isn't time to loose a smart 
bomb, so a rather frustrating death 
ensues. 

Gemini Wing has a similar, though 
greatly inferior, feel to Mission Geno- 
cide, a rather ancient 8 bit budget 
game. Where Mission Genocide 
squeezed every last ounce of speed 
from the Z60 machine lo get an 
extended screen scroll. Gemini Wing 
seems to be barely ticking over on its 
tiny scrolling window. And as 
Gernini Wing is over 10 times the 
price, it's not worth the bother. 
You've seen all this before. With 
better presentation, sad to say. 

Stewart C. Russell 




October 1989 AMIGA COMPUTING 33 



1 



■GAMES! 



irvr to\tt?v 



Pointing the way ahead 




EVIL was abroad and the land 
was suffering. The crops had 
failed three years in a row, then the 
water had become foul. Many people 
moved away to the north in the hope 
of escaping the pestilence, but to no 
avail. 

It was decided to seek the help of a 
wizard, so a party of four departed. 
They were never seen again. The 



fiiurni') 
Inttn mil 



situation is getting more desperate, 
so another party must go in search of 
a solution. 

You play the part of Tag, the 
apprentice food merchant who has 
been chosen to accompany Bergon 
the carpenter. Praxis the wizard and 
Eshcr the physician on a journey to 
discover what is happening to the 
land. Hopefully they will be able to 




put things right again. 

Journey is the story of their travels 
and their encounters with elves, 
trolls, dwarves, nymphs, wizards and 
many other strange creatures. 

The aim of the first part of the 
adventure is to reach the castle of the 
wizard Astrix. Here you will learn of 
the amulets of power which need to 
be collected and returned to Astrix so 
that he can battle with the Dark Lord 
and free the land. 

Playing Journey is like taking part 
in a book. Decisions that you make 
from time to time lead the story in 
different directions. Along the way 
there are many problems to solve, 
decisions about what direction to 
take and how best to fight enemies 
without getting yourself or your 
companions killed. 

The story can proceed in many dif- 
ferent ways and has many endings, 
but only one is correct. Can you make 
the right decisions or will your party 
meet the same fate as your 
predecessors? 

You are presented with a screen 
which is split into three parts. One 
displays a picture of the current 
scene and another the story text. At 
the bottom is a list of currently avail- 
able commands. Click the mouse on 
one to execute it. 

The pictures, drawn by artist 
Donald Langosy, are very pretty but 
do not seem to offer any clues. They 
appear to be just so much window 



sound LLLU1LH 

Graphics 
Gameplay 
V.ilur 



III 



n 



Overall - 78% 



dressing. The story, written by Marc 
Blank who co-authored the original 
mainframe version of Zork, is quite 
an interesting read in its own right. 
The game is entirely mouse driven so 
there is no need to type a single word, 
although you can use the keyboard if 
you wish. 

Packaging is, as always with 
Infocom games, very good. There is a 
map which is needed to complete the 
game and a little bag containing a 
strange crystalline object - its pur- 
pose remains obscure, but I think it is 
something to do with magic 

As the packaging is essential to 
complete the game, it means the disc 
can be left unprotected for easy back- 
ups or transfer to a hard drive. 

If you do not like reading much, 
then you probably will not like jour- 
ney. On the other hand, if you like 
settling down with a good book and 
would love to be able influence 
events in the story, this style of 
adventure will suit you down to the 
\ ground. 

Alex Aird 




It's my parly and I'll cry if I want lo 




MCO SOFTWARE LTD., UNIT 10, BURNHAM TRADING ESTATE, LAWSON ROAD 
^RTFORD, KENT. Mail Order by Cheque, Postal Order. ACC ESS or VI SA. 

lephone No.: 0322 92513/92518. FAX No.: 0322 93C2 



LJ KING a God can gel you down 
JJ sometimes. I mean it's all very 
well all that lerraforming and being 
fervently adored by the thronging 
multitudes, but let me level with you 
- all this omnipotence gets a bit 
boring. 

Staring down at the same little 
faces, flooding the same castles, 
accepting the same burnt sacrifices of 
the opposing religion's supporters. 
Sigh. Makes you wonder if it was all 
worthwhile in the first place. 

Well fear not. If your creation is 
getting to be a drag, why don't you 
create some more? Or, if you're not 
feeling up to the task, those nice 
people at Electronic Arts have some 
they have prepared earlier - no sticky 
back plastic or previoas experience 
required. 

The original Populous was 
excellent It is still riding high in the 
charts and has become the best 
selling game on the Amiga. Now 
comes the follow up, a disc con- 
taining five new maps. That is, five 
more environmental overlays for the 
original system. 

Ever since the two 16 bit machines 
became competitively priced rivals 
there has been bitterness and hatred 
between the two camps. Abuse has 
been hurled, families which once 
nurtured peace and understanding 
have broken up into heavily-armed 
factions. Even some magazines have 
split over their format differences. 

There have been no terrorist 
attacks or hostage scenes yet, but it 
can only be a matter of time. Now 
you can decide it forever. 

The Programmer map comes with 
two bands of merry men, Commo- 
dore supporters (hurrah!) and Atari 
freaks (Boo!). Both fight it out on a 
listing paper landscape, strewn with 
coffee cups, fag ends and other 
typical programming detritus. 

Straighten out the listings and 
build Spectrums for your supporters. 
(Well, everyone has lo start 
somewhere.) Scribble code to boost 
your numbers or launch a sneak 
attack with a floppy disc volcano. 
Take no quarter, careless swamps 
cost lives, Uncle Commodore needs 
YOU... Sorry, sometimes I get carried 
away. 

But I always escape and come back 
again. 

Moving on rather quickly we come 
to the Wild West scenario. Nice to see 
EA cast the Red Indians as the good 
guys. The world wouldn't be in the 
state it is now if they were still in 



charge over there. Mind you, 
everyone's Amigas would be made of 
wood and buckskin. 

No herds of buffalo sweeping 
majestically through the plains here, 
just desert, teepees and cactii. Watch 
out or the baddies will send a sheriff 
to decrease your numbers. I suppose 
that's a sort of Indian takeaway.,. 

The nostalgic of you may like to 
return to tools you used to build your 
first universe. In Legoland, er, I mean 
Blockland, everything is made out of 
Utile blocks, including the houses, 
the trees and the people. 

Discarded wheels hinder your 
cultivation plans while waves of 
decidedly uninviting green sea, 
which looks like it's composed of 
several thousand plastic blocks pre- 
heated at gas mark 7, lap against the 
blocky shores. 

Sillyland is. Very. The land is silly, 
the people are silly and the houses... 
Well, you wouldn't credit it really. 

Finally there is a kind of French 
flavour to the last map. No I don't 
mean lots of garlic and snails. I mean 
a rather topical, or perhaps typical, 
due to media saturation, reference to 
the French Revolution. Pull on your 
stripe y T shirts and wheel out the 
guillotine, or heads are going to roll. 

All the terrains have their par- 
ticular characteristics reflected in the 
behaviour of the followers - they die 
quicker in deserts, breed slower in 
the cold, and so on. 

Overall this makes an excellent 

addition to Populous. What d'you 

mean you don't have Populous? I 

don't know, sometimes I despair of 

Godkind. Now where's that 

earthquake icon, that ought to bring 

the faithful to their knees- 
Green 



ft>littlmt\ - / hv I'nmuvil I , mils 
CfUlH 



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iiiiiiiiiiiiiii 



Sound 

mum 

TUTTTTT nTTTl 



Gameplay 

U ll lll l llll l l ll 



Overall - 92% 



Back in May we managed to underrate 
Populous somewhat. You lot voted 
with your pockets and proved us 
wrong. Wo therefore throw ourselves 
on your mercy and retrospectively 
award Electronic Arts and Populous an 
Excellence gong. 



36 AMIGA COMPUTING October 1989 



■GAMES! 



MTHUTn A W\T 



It's only a game - isn't it? 



[ HIS makes a change. Normally 
J- such games come with a 20 page 
novella detailing the plot, including 
references to distant star systems, 
beautiful heroes and brave prin- 
cesses. In NightDawn we are made 
quite clear on the point that this is 
only a game. Glad to see someone has 
their priorities right. 

The lack of a meaningless plot also 
prevents reviewers from spending 
the first couple of paragraphs getting 
paid for the privilege of repeating h 
while trying to keep a straight face. 
Instead they must think of a snappy 
opening sentence by themselves, 
such as "This makes a change". 

Your objective? Well, whoever 
wrote the instructions couldn't think 
of one of those either. It must be to 
get to the next level. I suppose. After 
all, it is only a game. 

So you are given a sprite in the 
shape of a tank to try and do just that. 

In case you are having problems, 
(he instructions explain that you 
push the joystick away from you to 
go north, towards you for south and 
left and right for west and east 
respectively. Whoever wrote this 10 
page classic has all the imagination 
befitting a Neighbours script-writer. 

So enough of the badinage, what is 
the game like? A quick whirr from 
the disc drive and it loads with an 
almost instant tune. Then the custo- 
mary irrelevant loading screen 
appears and it's time to play. 

Each of the 10 levels is a large 
floating platform constructed of 
those little tiles that computer 
graphics designers love so much. 
Said tiles float over another colourful 
playfield and when you drive your 
tank - sorry, robot - everything 
scrolls in four directions with an eye- 
curdling parallax effect 

The tiles make up the form of a 
maze, and you can only get to the exit 
by opening doors with keys scattered 
over the entire platform. Various 
laser fences and moving floorways 
must also be turned off by finding the 
correct switches scattered around the 
place. 

Falling off the platform, running 
into a mine or being bit by alien fire 
will lose you one of the six lives you 
are given at the start of each level. 
Reminds me of Captain Fizz a bit, 
come to think of it. 

The ubiquitous add-ons are avail- 
able in the form of lasers, mine 
detectors and compass devices to 
help you find the exit. The detector is 
essential to discover the hidden 



mines, which have been planted just 
where you least expect them. And 
just when you think you have dis- 
covered them all, a lawnmower - 
sorry, robot - will drive around and 
plant some more. 

What mast he the best baddie seen 
in a long time is the wonderfully 
named "airbomb ejaculator". Don't 
you just love it when instructions are 
translated from German? 

Although hardly frightening in 
appearance, the ejaculators launch 
flying bombs which circle you, spir- 
alling closer and closer until either 
you kill them prematurely or they 
crash into you. All the time they 
make strange whooping noises like 
two small furry aliens from Alpha 
Centurii getting to know each other 
very well... 

The title music is very good and 
seems to go on forever. There is even 
a funky slap bass sample in there 
somewhere, which has been pro- 
grammed to bend in just the right 
way. Top marks for sonics. 



XightDaivn 
Math IliU's 



Sound ■ 


INI 


mill! 


Graphic, Lii 


1.1 II 


nun 


Gameplav H 1 1 


mi ii 


Value [Till II 




Overal 


I 


83% 



Spot effects during the game are 
also excellent - doors open with 
opening- door type noises and aliens 
exploding with exploding-aiien type 
noises. Who could ask for more? 

Although you will be attacked by 
gun emplacements and those flying 
bonking-bombs, NightDawn does 
not have enough action to merit the 
classification of arcade game. It will 
appeal to those who like exploring 
and solving problems. However, the 
lack of any significant difference 
between levels will cause interest to 
pall. 

fohn Kennedy 




Octolwr 1989 AMIGA CXJMPI TIW 




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38 AMIGA COMPUTIXG October 1989 



■PROGRAMMING! 



PICTURE the scene: A nice parly, 
good food, a drink or two. some 
wonderful people, interesting 
conversation, then suddenly the 
phrase "I'm a great believer in 
modular programming myself' drifts 
across the room. 

Everything stops. Silence. Eyes turn 
and fix themselves on the balding and 
bespectacled person in the corner, 
who suddenly remembers thai he has 
lo check up on the babysitter and 
leaves with a red face. 

Nobody likes talking about modular 
programming. It brings to mind all 
sorts of terrible practices such as flow 
charting and even - heaven forbid - 
the writing out in advance of a 
program's functions. 

Design a program in advance? Can't 
be done. Shouldn't be done. Won't be 
done. Go away and leave me alone. 
I'm just going to type in a program 
now. I'm not sure what it's going to 



be about, but I'm sure it will work. 
Probably. 

If this is your response to a 
programming methodology, well 
that's fine. You go right on ahead and 
make up your programs on the spur 
of the moment. I, on the other hand, 
will stick to my structured method 
and scribble a few ideas on a piece of 
paper. 

Both programs might work, but my 
program will be written quicker, be 
written better with fewer bugs and 
will be understandable when I look at 
it again next month. 

"So when are you going to do some 
Basic?" I hear you cry. Well actually I 
don't hear you cry that at all. It would 
be very hard to hear you cry, because 
I'm sure we are several hundred miles 
apart. Why should you cry anyway? 
Is all this talk of modular 
programming getting to much for 
you? In all probability you didn't say 



anything. I mean, if you are reading 
this magazine in the newsagents, then 
saying: "So when are you going to do 
some Basic?" would quite justly gel 
you some funny looks. 

In fact my saying that you did cry 
something was just a cunning trick 
that we are all taught at Computer 
Magazine Article Writers School. It is 
supposed to be slightly amusing and 
make you think everything is 
happening on an easy-going, informal 
footing. Which, of course, everything 
is. Because everyone here at Amiga 
Computing is really laid back and 
totally cool. 

I myself am in a really mellow 
mood. Even Green - who is writing 
some game reviews in the room 
across the hall at this very moment — 
is operating on a higher intellectual 
plane brought about by some very 
dodgy mushroom yoghurt which we 
found in the local supermarket. 

Another equally valid reason for 
pretending lo hear you cry things is 
that it uses up space which would 
otherwise have to be filled with 
carefully researched and finely crafted 
instructional prose. 

At the moment I'm revising for my 
rather important exams, which means 
that I just don't have the time for 
major literary and programming 
mega-masterpieces. The only thing I 
do have time for is visiting the college 
library and daydreaming about a girl 
called Carol who works there. 

Carol is very pretty and not 
interested in me, so I'm sure you can 
see my dilemma. Bui enough of my 
problems, let's look at some Basic. 

RECOGNISING the advantages of 
a structured and modular 
approach to programming, most of 
the post-Basic languages offer some 
kind of sub-program construct. Pascal 
and ADA have the "procedure" 
concept, even the much-maligned 
Forth is written using modules of 
code contained in "words". 

No self-respecting language can 
afford to be without some sort of 
modularisation these days. Microsoft 
was not so proud as to avoid 
borrowing some of these ideas from 
other languages and incorporating 
them into AmigaBasic. 

A sub-program must satisfy several 
criteria before it can be classed a 




A look at modular 
programming - now 
there's a term to stop 
anv social intercourse 
dead in its tracks. 
John Kennedy 
explains 




uild 
better 

Basic 



OctotarMW amiga cxiMpmsc n 



■PROGRAMMING! 



4 

useful construct. First, you must be 
allowed lo pass and receive variables 
to and from it in the form of 
parameters. You must also be allowed 
to have local variables. 

Local variables only exist inside the 
sub-program. Nothing the external 
program can do - including defining 
some variables of the same name - 
can be allowed to interfere with the 
values of the local variables and vice- 
versa. 

The use of such variables keeps 
bugs to a minimum by ensuring 
important values can only be changed 
at specific points in a program. Using 
local variables means it would be 
impossible to change the value of a 
variable by mistake at some obscure 
point in a program and then spend 
hours trying to trace the errors back. 

TH^ opposite of a local variable 
is a global one. This can have 
its value changed at any point in a 
program. Most variables used in Basic 
are of the global type, which explains 
why Basic programs are difficult to 
debug. 

Luckily all these exciting 
possibilities are possible from within 
AmigaBasic. An added bonus of 
using sub-programs instead of, say, 
sub-routines - code which is accessed 
via GOSUB - is that it is impossible 
to execute them by mistake. The sub- 
program can only be called by name: 
There is no danger of the flow of your 
Basic program accidentally drifting 
into a sub-program because you left a | 

f 

The Insult! Prograi by John Kennedy. 
' (With help froi Green). 

I 

' Only works with two Anigas linked via 
the 

' Serial ports using a null nodei cable. 

nmber=0:textSs" 
CALL Initialise 

WHILE textSo-STOP- 
IF nun=1 THEN CALL Rec.isg(texrS) 
IF nui=2 THEN CALL Send.asg ( textS) 
IF nui*1 THEN nun=2 ELSE nun=t 

HEM 

PRINT 

PRINT 'Program stopped.' 

PRINT 'Go and lake friends again." 

SUB Initialise STATIC 

Figure I 



RETURN statement out. 

Look at Figure I, which 
demonstrates the syntax of defining a 
sub-program. It starts with the word 
SUB and ends with END SUB. 
Nothing really complicated there. 
Where things do get a mite tricky is 
the syntax needed to pass variables 
into and out of the sub-program. 
There are two extra words to control 
this parameter passing: STATIC and 
SHARED. 

The word STATIC always appears 
in the sub-program's heading. It is 
really only a reminder about the 
variables listed between it and the 
word SUB - variable] and variable2 
in our example. All the variables 
within this space cannot be altered by 
the rest of the program. Outside the 
sub-program, their values remain 
static. 

The word SHARED is optional Any 
variables listed after this keyword 
may be changed by the outside 
program - like variable3 in the 
example. The variables are shared 
between the program and the sub- 
program. They are, in effect, global 
variables. 

The variables passed can be of any 
type, even entire arrays. To pass an 
array you put empty brackets after it 
in the CALL statement, and brackets 
containing the size of the array in the 
sub-program header. Like so: 

CALL TestArray NaieSO 

SUB TestArray NaieSdB) STATIC 

Do soae stuff. 
END SUB 

"What about local variables?" I 



SHARED nun 
OPEN 'C0H1:968B,n,8,T* AS 1 
CLS:PRINT 'Uelcoie to INSULT';PRINT 
INPUT "Are you number 1 or If, nun 

END SUB 

SUB Send.msg (nessageS) STATIC 

LINE INPUT 'Insult? ',aS 

PRINT #1,a$ 
END SUB 

SUB Rec.nsg (aessageS) STATIC 
LINE INPUT #1,«ssageS 
PRINT *Insutt:';iessageS 
CALL Pronounce. nsg (nessageS) 

END SUB 

SUB Pronounce. nsg dessageJ) STATIC 
KOrd$=TRANSLATES<nessageS> 
SAY wordS 

END SUB 



SUB variable!, variabte2 STATIC 
SHARED variable3 
variable* - 465284 

REN Part of the sub-progran where 
REN all the hard work is done. 

END SUB 

Figure I 

don't pretend to hear you cry. Well, 
any variables that are defined and 
used within the sub-program are 
automatically taken to be local. 
Nothing they do will affecl other 
variables in the main program - for 
example, variable4 in Figure I. If you 
want them to be changed by the rest 
of the program, they must be defined 
with the SHARED variables. 

Whenever END SUB is reached the 
sub-program will stop as though it 
were a normal sub-routine reaching a 
RETURN statement. If you wish to 
leave the sub-program early you can 
escape from it by using EXIT SUB at 
any point. 

There are some special rules that 
apply to sub-programs. First, you 
must not use CLEAR, user-defined 
functions or that funny word 
COMMON, which is used to pass 
variables to MERGED and CHAINED 
programs. You are also forbidden to 
define another sub-program within 
the first. 

Remember also that sub-programs 
cannot be recursive, that is they 
cannot call themselves, or by calling 
another sub-program indirectly call 
themselves again. Green says this is 
silly because recursion is exactly what 
sub-programs and procedures were 
created for. I tend to agree. But 
recursion is a tricky programming 
technique to use and leaving it out of 
AmigaBasic avoids a lot of problems. 

OUR main program this month 
will be one from which Green 
and I have derived many hours of 
pleasure. It is called Insult! and 
allows you to slag off a friend from a 
distance. The distance depends on the 
length of the null modem cable you 
have connected between the serial 
ports of two Amigas which are both 
running the program. It can be up to 
20 metres - or even further with a 



40 AMIGA COMPUTING October 1989 



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■PROGRAMMING! 



rather expensive cable. 

The cheapest way to get a suitable 
cable is to buy two 25-way female D 
connectors and a long length of five- 
way wire. (The wire used to connect 
telephones is six-way and not very 
expensive.) Then connect pin 1 on 
each socket together, pin 2 of one 
socket to pin 3 of the other <md vice- 
versa. Then do the same cross-over 
with pins 4 and 5. 

Using this cable will allow you to 
link two Amigas together for two 
player games such as Falcon or 
Populous or for data communication 
using a comms package. 

When the program is running on 
both machines - expect to be asked to 
insert your Workbench disc - you 
must decide who is player number 1 
and who is player number 2. We do 
this by having a fight: The loser is 
player number 2, who must also do 
the washing up for a week. 

Player number 1 can then type his 
insult into the computer. The insult 



will be transformed into serial data, 
sent along the wire and be received 
by the other player's Amiga using the 
built-in speech synthesiser. 

The technical details of inter-Amiga 
communications are not really the 
topic under discussion here, but merit 
at least a passing mention. The Amiga 
provides easy access to its serial and 
parallel ports to the Basic 
programmer. By OPENing a "stream" 
at the start of the program, data may 
be sent or received using simple 
INPUT and PRINT statements. 



THESE streams are very flexible 
and refer to either a file on disc, 
in memory or an external output 
device. The serial port is such a 
device, and by connecting two 
Amigas using this port we can have a 
fast and easy-to-use computer 
network. 

All the hard work is done by the 
OPEN statement, which specifies the 
device to send and get data to and 



from - in this case COMl: - and the 
baud rate (speed) and other little 
niggling details. All we have to do is 
to remember to add a # (pronounced 
hash) and a stream number to any 
PRINTs or INPUTs. 

The Insult! program is constructed 
using a veritable plethora of sub- 
programs, which split it up into 
individual fruit pies, er, program 
modules. Each module performs a 
single task such as sending, receiving 
or saying a message. The message 
itself is passed as a STATIC variable 
between the sub-programs. 

Some local variables are also 
generated, such as ward$ in the 
Pronounce.msg sub-program. There 
are no shared variables, because none 
were needed. 

The use of sub-programs in Basic is 
a large step forward. It allows you to 
construct a library of programs ready 
for instant use. You don't have to 
remember how they work, only the 
inputs and outputs of each one. You 
could even use other people's sub- 
programs in your own programs. 





L/GHtJ 



- 3D RAY TRACING - 

* 

C-Light is a complete ray tracing system for generating 3D pictures 
and animations for the AMIGA. 

Some of the amazing effects: 



M 





Fish eye and 
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Wide range of 
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True Shadows 
Multiple Light 

Sources Wy\ Easy 3D scene editor 

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C-Light runs on all AMIGA'S and comes with an easy to use 

program and manual. 

To order: send cheque/PO payable to Artronic Systems Ltd. quoting 
items required or telephone 0423 525325 for credit card sales. 
TYade enquires welcome 
Artronic Systems Ltd. 1-3 Haywra Crescent, Harrogate 

HG1 5BG 



Price £49.95 



42 AMIGA COMPimNG October 198>> 




■"Seal 



Now you can use an Amiga 
(or any other computer) 
to send correspondence 
in seconds to ANY of 
the many millions of fax 
machines in ANY part of 
the world. 

And if you want you can 
send the same fax to up 
to 500 different addresses 
simultaneously. 

All you need, in addition 
to your computer, are a 
telephone, a modem - 
and a subscription to 
MicroLink. 

Fax is just another of the 
many new services now 
available on MicroLink, 
Britain's fastest-growing 
electronic mail provider. 

Details from 0625 878888 



M.A.S.T. 



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TWINDRIVH - £149 96 (Twin Drive hat two awl tones) 

• Quality Fujftau Mechanlem • Removable Cable 

• Powered from Amiga™ 1 • Robust Beige Metal Caalng 
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Plugpak only £10.00 • Plua C5 Carriage VAT Included 

MrCROMEGS™ 

Thla internal 512K Card (a a direct replacement for the AS01. 
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October I9HU AMIGA COMPUTING 43 



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Xenon II 10.90 11.99 

XyDots 10.00 11.00 

XenophoM 2400 1400 

ZanyGo8 24.99 14.90 




AMIGA PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE 




u Emulator 2.0 
s-sjsOnw 2000 

Modeller 30 
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Audiomaster 2.0 
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letter 2 0 
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3gMffw Copystand 
Oaten Paint III 
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Desktop Video 

Prog Language 

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Super Htrots 

Funny Figures 

Science Fiction _~ 

Font Editor 

WordVD. Base/Spread . 

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Copystand 

Graphics 

Music 

Video Animation ... 

Video Productions .... 



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Deluxe Photoiab 
Deluxe Print II 
Drum Studio 
D»g.calc 
Devpacll 
0>g> paint 
Dos to Dos 
Director 

Directors Toolkit 
OesignM) 
Fun School 2 
Fantawsion 
GFA Basic 3.0 
GokJspel II 
Gomt 3 0 
Hercules Copy 
Home Accounts 
Intro Cad 
KComm 2.0 
Kind Words 2.0 
LogistU 

Lan*e C 5 0 Dev 
Lames C* 
Maiishct Plus 
Movie Setter 
Omega File 



Animation Ham 

Print Willy 

Prot. Drum Track 

Spreadsheet 

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Desktop Vklao - 

Utility 

Cad Elec/Technic — 
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Data base - 


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2499 


Personal Tax 


Income Tax 


39.95 


2499 


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134.95 


Publishers Choice 


integrated DTP 


119.95 


64.99 


Pageseller 


DTP 


79.95 


54.99 


Professional Page 


Prof. OTP . 


249.05 


169.99 


Photon Painl 20 


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__~.B9.00 


49.99 


Photon Video 


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99 95 


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Utility 


69 95 


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Pro Video 


Video Animation 


169 95 


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Promise 


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24.95 


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-4995 


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89 05 


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4D Animation 


425 03 


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99 99 


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226 00 


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19.95 


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114.95 


7400 



CLUB 68000 INTRODUCTORY OFFER 

Fill out this coupon and return it to CLUB 68000 Ltd. Your only commitment is to pay £10.00 for one year's membership 
of CLUB 68000. Mail this coupon to CLUB 68000 Ltd., Suite I, Wickham House, 2 Upper Teddington Road, 
Hampton Wick, Kingston on Thames, Surrey KT1 4DP 



Please send me _ — 



IH*tltltlt*ltl4M4MlPlMf»l»*l 



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Q Cheque enclosed 

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MicroBotics means Amiga-Power! 

Whichever Amiga you own - or plan to buy - we have the expansion you need 

For the 

Amiga 2000... 



For the 



HardFrame/2000 

DMA SCSI Interface 

If your application calls for super-speed 
uninterrupted access to your hard disk, 
HardFrame/2000 is your answer. This 
is a high end, no holds barred SCSI 
interface that operates at bus speeds. 
One HardFrame/2000 can support up 
to seven devices. Word-length data 
transfer, FIFO buffering, TRUE DMA, 
mounted on a metal frame suitable for 
all standard 3.5" SCSI drives (or, if you 
prefer, connected to a bay mounted or 
external disk). Available now. 

Suggested List Price: £219.95 



8-UP! FastRAM 

Maximum Memory in One Slot! 

The FastRAM card that every Amiga 
owner will eventually come to - why 
limit yourself to only two megabytes 
per slot? 8-UP! will take you all the way 
to the top of the auto-configuration 
memory space of EIGHT MEGA- 
BYTES! 8-UP! is available in two ver- 
sions, the standard DIP model accepts 
2, 4, 6 or 8 megabytes of 1 meg 
DRAMS. For maximum flexibility there 
is the SIMM version which lets you 
customconf igure with mixed 256k and 
1 meg SIMM modules, including Mi- 
croBotics exclusive PopSIMMS.8-UP! 
is a power-efficient, zero wait state, 
autoconf iguring design. 'The latest and 
greatest" (Amiga World, Jan. 1 989). 8- 
UP! is available now. 

Suggested List Price: £149 



MouseTime 

The easiest to use, most cost-effective 
implementation of a battery backed 
clock for the A1000. Passes the port 
through for joysticks or other devices. 
Complete with WorkBench software. 
Available now. 

Suggested List Price: £25 



Amiga 500... 



M501 Memory + Clock 

Half a Meg at a Great Price! 

As we are all coming to realise, a one 
megabyte Amiga (at least) is a neces- 
sity not an option. When you add the 
inboard 51 2k memory and clock mod- 
ule to your A500 make sure it's a 
MicroBotics M501. Note that just like 
the Commodore and unlike some third 
party expansions, we use a long lived 
rechargeable NiCad battery - which 
you'll never have to replace. Set the 
MicroBotics clock using the same 
WorkBench software as you would 
use for the Commodore clock. What's 
the difference? You get to keep £25 
compared to the Commodore version. 
The M501 is available now. 

Suggested List Price: £124.95 
StarBoard2/500 

Two Megs PLUS a Choice of Modules 

The premier memory expansion for 
the A1000 is now available on the 
A500. In it's own case with an inde- 
pendent power supply strong enough 
to handle StarBoard2 and a second 
A1000 style StarBoard2, all the power 
and flexibility of this great expansion 
device is available to you. Up to 2 
megabytes of autoconfiguring, zero 
wait state FastRAM, MuftiFunction or 
SCSI module capability for math chip 
or fast SCSI hard disk interfacing. 
StarBoard2 also has an LED diagnos- 
tic/confidence light to indicate the 
power-up state of your Amiga and 
expansion. An A1 000 style StarBoard2 
can be connected to the bus pass-up 
for a total of FOUR megs and two 
modules. "The best ..." (Amiga World, 
Jan. 88). 

Suggested List Price: £199 



For the 

Amiga 1000... 




MicroBotics, Inc. 

OASIS 



StarBoard2 

The Expansion of Choice 

The superb memory expansion for the 
Amiga 1 000, still going strong! Up to 2 
megabytes of autoconfiguring, zero 
wait state, FastRAM in a sleek, all steel 
Amiga coloured case plus the capabil- 
ity to accept either of the two daughter- 
board modules, the original Multi- 
Function Module or the new SCSI 
Module. StarBoard2 is powered by the 
bus (up to two StarBoard2's can be 
supported by the A1 000) and passes it 
on. 

Suggested List Price: £199 

MuftiFunction Module 

High Tech at Low Price 

This daughterboard installs on any 
StarBoard2. It features a socket and 
software for the 68881 Math Chip as 
an I/O device (MicroBotics pioneered 
this approach on the Amiga - now 
directly supported in the maths librar- 
ies of AmigaDOS 1 .3) . Sticky Disk gives 
you the most "bullet-proof " rebootable 
RAM disk - its hardware protection 
turns it into a solid state, superfast 
disk. Parity checking of StarBoard2 
RAM can be enabled when extra parity 
ram is installed. Finally, the Multifunc- 
tion Module carries an easy to use 
battery-backed clock to set the system 
time on startup. 

Suggested List Price: £55 

StarDrive SCSI Module 

Fast, Low Cost SCSI Module 

When installed in any model Star- 
Board2, StarDrive offers you cost ef- 
fective, pseudo-DMA access to SCSI 
hard drives and other devices. Fast, 
easy to install including driver software 
and disk diagnostics. StarDrive also 
includes a battery backed clock to set 
system time on startup. 

Suggested List Price: £75 



Tell your dealer he can order direct - no minimum quantity - show him this ad! 
In Europe: Oasis Services Ltd., 17 Andrews Place, London SE9 2SJ. TEL: (01) 859 4936 
In U.S.A.: MicroBotics, Inc., 8111 Alpha Drive, Richardson TX 75081. TEL: (214) 4375330 



46 AMIGA aismniNG Ot:lobtrr 1989 



What you'll find 
on our cover disc 



Chariots 
of Wrath 



f 




WHILE fighting for 
your king in far off 
lands, you. Prince Agar of 
the Forgotten Kingdom, have 
been commanded to remain 
in the king's castle following 
accusations of excessive acts 
of barbarism in battle. 

Confined to your quarters, 
a bard tells you that the 
baron, your arch rival, has 
kidnapped Princess Arthena. 
your future queen. 

Enraged by thu terrible 
news, you have no option 
but to disobey your king. 
You must return to save your 
princess, and at the same 
time rid the world of the 
baron. So once again you 
wearily climb into your 
space chariot and commence 
the voyage home. 

Half way to the Baron's 
castle you come to a land of 
giant carniverous insects. 
Swarming red and green 
ladybirds, shiny beetles 
marching relentlessly for- 
ward, all out to stop you 



reaching Princess Arthena. 

Can you beat off the 
attacks and win through to 
fight the giant green beetle at 
the end of the forest? Course 
you can, because pro- 
grammar Glenn Williams 
has given you infinite lives. 
And you're going to need 
them. Go get them insects! 



demo uses every Spare 

otter. If you h 

lem hading it -f 0r 
instance if /, Joads for r 

«h,leand then the screen 
foes weird - sim , 
remove the cover disc 
f 'om the drive, snitch off 
y^ Mchine, make sure 
all external devices, tike 

""PH'ged, throw some 

and °T } '° Ur shoul der. 
ana reboot. 



r ■ 



The one on the left is harmless but matey above will 
lav eggs all over you if you don't watch out 



October AM Hi A COMW 77YI. 47 



COVER DISC J COVER DISC J COVEI 




BECAUSE the world is 
round, some countries 
look bigger and more impor- 
tant than others which have 
larger land masses. This is an 
illusion we have become 
used to with the flat maps of 
the world that we usually 
see. 

Open your filofax (Spot 
the yuppie. Ed) to the map of 
the world and compare 
Greenland to India. You'll 
see that while Greenland 
occupies 840,000 square 
miles it looks much bigger 
than India's 1.269,213 
square miles. 

To put everything into per- 
spective and get a real feel of 
how big the world is, you 
need a globe. And John Ken- 
nedy's equivalent of the 
Total Perspective Vortex 
does that. 

By storing its coordinates 
in terms of latitude and lon- 
gitude, all the countries of 
the world are shown fairly. 
Yet again Amiga Computing 
rights some of the world's 
injustices. 

Obviously, with only a 
limited number of points, the 
map isn't 100 per cent accu- 
rate, but then no map ever is. 

The program was written 
in Amiga Basic and compiled 
using the HiSoft Basic 
Compiler. It is a fine example 
of how good software which 
follows the rules of Amiga 



Globe 



programming can be written 
in Basic. 

When you run the pro- 
gram you should select Draw 
Globe from the Project 
menu. This will show how 
the globe is set up as a 
default. 

To zoom in, select Change 
Settings from the Settings 
menu and use a number 
bigger than 1 for the magnifi- 
cation. A sensible maximum 
is 10 for a crinkly bit like 
Europe and 5 for boring 
places like Australia. 

Each time you change the 
settings you need to use the 
Draw Globe option to see the 
effect. You can use decimal 
places for fine tuning. Check 
out the bug in the input 
routine. Enter a negative 
number. Or a huge one like 
10e27. Sigh. 

You can make the world 
go round by altering the lati- 
tude and longitude. Spin the 
world on its axis by 
changing the latitude for any 
value between -180 and 
+ 180. Or trip from pole to 



pole with values from +90 to 
-90. 

You really will have the 
whole world in your hands. 

Globe was sent to us by 
John Kennedy, a 22-year-old 
student from Bangor, North- 
ern Ireland, who is into his 
fourth year of Information 
Technology at Queens. 



Belfast. John has an A500. 
512k of extra memory, two 
floppies and a giant 26in 
colour monitor from Canada. 

His ambition is to play 
Elite in a life-sized replica of 
a Cobra Mk3, with docking 
computer. Dream on, John. 
And let's have some error- 
checking next time. 




Globe defaults on Brentwood, the 
centre of the known universe 



DiskOpti 



THE most infuriating 
thing ahnul the Amiga 
is the disc: drive. What is the 
point of having a buill in 
floppy when it still lakes an 
age to load? 

Part of the; problem is the 
way in which the Amiga 
accesses the disc. Because it 
is random access it means 
thai, unlike n more convent- 
ional tape drive, files do not 



have to follow one after the 
other. They can start any- 
where on the disc. 

In fact each block of data 
can be stored on any block 
on the disc, with Ihe relevant 
information as to where to 
find the next block. 

This all makes for efficient 
use of disc space, but when it 
comes to read in all that 
information the head has to 



travel backwards and for- 
wards over all the place 
looking for the information. 

You may have noticed 
sometimes your drive light is 
on. but the disc is not being 
accessed (there is no grind- 
ing noise). These are Ihe 
"wasted" periods of moving 
the head. 

Until Workbench 1.4 
arrives with the IT'S system 
for floppies, the next best 
thing is DiskOpti. This 
shareware utility will 
rearrange files on disc to 
appear in order and as close 
together as possible, 
minimising the search lime 
for blocks of data. 



The program works wi 
two drives. A commerci 
disc oplimiser, BAD, on 
needs one. but if yoursyste 
crashes in the middle ■ 
writing to the disc, wil 
DiskOpti you still have ll 
original. 

The program runs fro 
Workbench. Double click < 
the DiskOpti icon in ll 
Utilities drawer. Hnldii 
down the right mouse butl< 
will reveal two simp 
menus. 

Let's go for a trial ru 
Suppose you have tw 
drives. DF0: and DFU |u 
pop Ihe original disc in DF 
and a blank in DEI:, sold 




48 AMIGA COMPUTING October 19B9 



DISC J COVER DISC J C< 




KUlFastMem 




SOME programs don't 
like expanded memory. 
When software is loaded into 
the Amiga the operating 
system automatically re- 
locates the program 
according to the amount of 
memory available. This con- 
fuses some hadly written 
programs which think they 
know where they have 
loaded. 
The usual solution is to 



turn over your Amiga, open 
the trap-door and remove the 
ram pack. This is a pain. 

As ever, some enterprising 
programmers have come up 
with a solution. Cesare Dieni 
and Carlo Borreo from Italy 
have written a shareware 
program which switches off 
the extra fast memory if you 
run it. 

When ihe computer re- 
boots after a Ctrl-Amiga- 



Amiga it will think it only 
has 512k available. To get 
the full quota of memory 
back you have to switch off 
the computer and wait a few 
of seconds before switching 
back on again. 

If you want to copy the 
utility to another disc you 
will have to transfer three 



files from the Utilities direc- 
tory: KillFastMem. Kill- 
FastMem.info and KillFast. 
This is because the Hie Kill- 
FastMem is a script file for 
IconX, which runs KillFast. 
Use the Copy command from 
CLI; dragging the bunny 
rabbit icon to another disc 
will not work. 



REMEMBER when 64k 
seemed a lot? Now a 
megabyte feels more like a 
meagrebyte. Even 880k discs 
aren't big enough to store 
everything you want to keep 
together. What you need is a 
way to make your programs 
smaller. What you need is a 
PowerPacker. 

Franois Nico has written a 
shareware program which 
squashes other programs. 
PowerPacker looks for bits of 
the file which are the same, 
and instead of duplicating 
the code remembers to look 
for that bit again when the 
program loads. 
How carefully it looks for 



PowerPacker 



matches affects how tightly 
the program can be packed. 
The tighter the packing, the 
longer it takes to compress. 

The result is a compressed 
program which can be run 
just like the original. It 
decompresses itself when 
you run it. This uses a clever 
bit of the program which 
attaches itself to the start of 
the file. 

The decompression takes a 
moment or two. It also needs 
memory in which to store the 
compressed program, and 
more memory in which to 
store the program as the data 
is decompressed. This means 
that big programs cannot be 
decompressed on a half meg 
machine. 

Running all the way 
through the code comparing 
bytes takes a while, so you 
need to be prepared to wait. 
To stop you thinking that the 
whole system has crashed 
when you load the program, 
there are a number of tell- 
tale signs which indicate the 
thing is decompressing. 

Either the whole screen 
flashes as a rainbow stripe 
runs through the display, or 
the pointer flashes, or the 
whole screen wiggles. 



mtCkir i 
lirfttt : 

n*t r»st : 
Limst 

*ss Iff 



FOUER-PACKCR 1,1b 

rilr HMt 
flit Unfltfc : 



I button to abort. 



rut 'iimnH'... 



it 



Holding down both mouse buttons aborts the crunch 



This is set up by using an 
option when the program 
is crunched, and can be 
switched off altogether. 

Because floppy discs are 
so slow it is often quicker to 
load a crunched program 
and decompress it than it is 
to wait for the original to 
load. 

The program comes with 
an excellent documentation 
file - double click on Pow- 
erPacker.doc to read it. 
However if you want to get 
going straight away here are 
some simple instructions 



showing how to crunch 
AmigaBasic from the 
Workbench 1.3 enhancer 
pack. 

Boot up from the cover 
disc. Select the Workbench 
startup. Double click on the 
lightbulb icon to open the 
Utilities drawer. 

Find the PowerPacker icon 
- the one with a hammer - 
and double click on it. When 
the program has loaded and 
de-crunched itself, go to the 
Project menu and select 



s with ilfo -> dfl from the 

icrcial ptimum menu and lot Dis- 

', onl\ pti gel on with it. Obvi- 

systcn - us I y the time taken to 

Hie of *>ptimise a disc will depend 

, with how fragmented it was to 

ve thi \nn with. 

Another feature is the abil- 

i from 4y to give a listing to the 

lick on inter or file of all the track 

in thr HAtUs, 

>lding this gives comprehensive 

button -formation on all the blocks 

implt the disc, details which 
CHi be used before and after 

I run ptimisation so you can girt a 

two : ,*kI idea of just what l)is- 

:. Just «Opti has done, 

'i DFO. I li 1 1 details are given in 

selecl -ski ipiLdoc. 



October 1989 AMIGA IXMPITISG 49 



COVER DISC / COVER DISC J COVE* 



Load. This will produce a 
directory of the cover disc. 

Don't worry, just wait for it 
to finish. Swap the cover disc 
with your copy of Extras. 
You are using a hackup, 
aren't you? Click on the DFO: 
gadget and PowerPacker will 
read the directory from the 
correct disc. 

Find AmigaBasic in the 
directory entry. You don't 
have to wait for the whole 
list to load, PowerPacker is 
very intelligent and doesn't 
force you to wait. 

Click on the line which 
says AmigaBasic and then 
on OK. PowerPacker does 
the rest. U will suck in the file 
and start cninching. 

The program will multi- 
task, so you could run 
another Workbench pro- 
gram, But PowerPacker uses 
a lot of memory and 
processor time, so it is prob- 
ably best to go off and make 
a cup of tea or read a few 
games reviews, depending 



on whether you want nour- 
ishment for the body or soul. 

When you get back you 
will find that Powerpacker is 
still working on the file; it 
counts up. showing how far 
it has got. When the crunch 
is finished (about seven min- 
utes) it will display how 
effective the operation was: 



100% crunched 
Done. 

Original length: 103500 
Crunched length: 72148 
(72720) 

Gained 31% (31352) ! 



Save AmigaBasic back to 
the copy of Extras disc. The 
program will ask you if you 
are sure you want to over- 
write the old one. Quit Pow- 
erPacker. The Extras disc 
which was full now has 63 
blocks free, which is enough 
room to save a couple of 
short Basic programs. 

Powerpacker really does 
give you something for 
nothing. 



DiskView 




ONE of the nice things 
about this shareware 
program is that it is not only 
useful but is also very pretty 
to look at. The whole objec- 
tive of the program is to give 



a visual representation of 
where data is stored on a 
disc. 

The information is dis- 
played on a large grid with 
sectors and sides on uhe ver- 



The Motion Maker 



Motion Maker author 
Andrew McGough 



l.in- . HVIIU 

Ai*i*.i'. Mi-mi 




WOULDN'T it be 
great if you could 
create a smooth animation 
by drawing only two pic- 
tures - by sketching what 
you want the animation to 




look like at the start and the 
finish of a sequence, then 
asking a computer to draw 
the bits in between? 

It's called tweening. Zoe- 
trope does it. So does DPaint 
III. Sort of. But neither will 
do transformations. You 
can't turn squares into trian- 
gles. With The Motion Maker 
you can. 

Let's get going with a 
simple example. Boot up the 
program by double clicking 
on the Motion icon in the 
Reader-Contributions/The- 
Motion-Maker drawer. 

You'll see a black screen 
with seven gadgets down the 
left, five of which have 
writing next to them. This is 
the menu system. 

Click once on Lines Menu 
and four new gadgets will 
appear. Click New Line. The 
screen will go blank. Move 
the pointer to somewhere top 
left and hold down the left 
mouse button. Now drag a 
line down and to the right — a 
couple of inches will do — 
and release the mouse 



SO AMIGA COMPUTING October 19H9 



•R DISC / COVER DISC / O 




tical axis and tracks, known 
in Amiga circles as cylin- 
ders, on the horizontal. 

The small size of each 
individual square means you 
can view the entire disc at 
once, something not possible 
with most other disc infor- 
mation systems. 

Start the utility by clicking 
on its icon. The screen will 
blank and the grid will 
appear along with some 
general information at the 
bottom of (lie screen. Hold 
down the right mouse button 
and select All from the 
Project menu. Now go to the 
Drive menu and select DFO:. 

The program will access 
the drive and three white 
squares will appear in the 
grid. These are the squares 
that are reserved by 
AmigaDos for keeping the 
disc information on and 
booting. 

Click on the single white 
square standing on its own at 
cylinder 40 sector 0. This is 
the root block, which con- 



Should you have problems with 

— ,r not a SUD- w ' * „ ,;„n and 



I if you are not a sub- 
scriber and your disc does 

not work, please send H 
to: Protoscan Ltd. Amiga 
Cover Disc Barrel Road 
St Ives PK174LE. You will 
be sent a new disc. 



tains the structural infor- 
mation of the disc - where 
all the file headers are. and 
stuff like that. 

The disc will be accessed 
again and after a short while 
the rectangles of the grid will 
begin to fill with tiny colour- 
coded squares, two squares 
to each grid position. 

The header blocks, the 
First in a sequence of blocks, 
will be solid and either one 
or two colours. The data 
blocks associated with these 



, IF vou subscribe to 
Amiga Computing and 
VO ur disc has been 
damaged in the post 
please send iUo: Database 
Direct, Amiga Cover Disc. 

freepost VOmmm 

Port. South Wirral Lb5 
3EB. You will be sent a 
new disc. 



your disc . - - 

» If you damage your disc 
_ for instance If the dog 
has chewed it or your 
mum has washed it -you 
ran Ret a new one by 
sending £1.50 to Proto- 
scan Ltd. Please make 
your cheque or postal 
order payable to Proto- 
scan Ltd. 



headers will appear in the 
same colour scheme as the 
header, but the lower half of 
the rectangle will be a short 
vertical line instead of a solid 
block of colour. Sounds 
complicated, but it looks 
impressive. 

To view a particular file 
select Project:Erase to clear 
the screen. Then deselect All 
from the Project menu and 
re-select DFO from Drive. 

Once again you should 
click on the white rectangle 



representing the root block. 
This time you will notice that 
when the program reads the 
disc, only the header blocks 
appear. 

Now by clicking on any of 
these the data blocks for that 
header will appear - very 
useful for seeing exactly 
where on the disc a par- 
ticular file is stored. 

This utility is at its most 
impressive when used before 
and after a disc optimiser. It 
shows very well how order 
comes out of chaos. 



button. You have drawn a 
line. 

The main menu will 
reappear. Click once on 
Frames Menu and then 
Choose Frame. Twenty 
squares will appear, the first 
(wo of which are occupied 
by the line you have just 
drawn. Click once on the 
second frame. The main 
menu will come back, and in 
the background is your 

second frame. 

Now click on Lines Menu 
and Redraw Line. Move the 
pointer over to the right- 
hand side of the screen and 
draw another line. Longer if 
you like. And at a different 

ingle. 

You've just created a 
second frame - the finishing 
point for the animation 
sequence. 

Back at the main menu, 
click on Miscellaneous and 
then on Display Animation. 
Are you impressed, or are 
you impressed? 

You can tween and trans- 
form filled areas as well as 



lines. The demonstration file 
shows this to good effect. 
Click on Miscellaneous and 
Load Animation to bring up 
a file requester. Click on 
Motion. demo and OK. 

When the file has loaded, 
click on Miscellaneous 
again, followed by Display 
Animation. If the title bar is 
bugging you. you can switch 
that off in the Miscellaneous 
menu. 

You'll notice that the 



background colour has 
changed for the demo. The 
program has a full palette of 
32 colours, all of which can 
be changed to whatever hues 
you like. Double click on the 
Motion.doc icon to read the 
full instructions. 

The Motion Maker was 
written by AmC reader 
Andrew McGough using 
Lattice C (v4.1), PowerWin- 
dows for the Intuition struc- 
tures and the PD file- 



QuickStart 



PROGRAMMERS, how 
many times do you 
hold Ctrl-D down to break 
into the CLI mega-fast, and 
having done that typed, 
system/setmap gb, setclock. 
setpatch... and so on? Well, 
wouldn't it be very handy to 
be able to type one word and 
have all your favourite com- 



mands executed for you? 

If that's not what you 
want, too bad. However, if it 
is. QuickStart does just that. 
Read the instructions on how 
to use it by double clicking 
on the QuickStart icon. 

This reader submission is 
from Toby Simpson, 19- 
year-old freelance pro- 



Requester program. Andrew, 
who is 17. has a one meg 
A500 with two disc drives. 
Top of his wish list is a video 
digitiser. The money he's 
earned by sending us this 
program should buy him one 
comfortably. 

Andrew is currently 
studying for A levels. His 
ambition is to become an 
electronics engineer. He's 
certainly finding his way 
around the Amiga OK. 



grammer and director of The 
Mind Boggles Development 
Corporation. Toby and his 
one meg, twin floppy. A500 
live in Norwich and share a 
wish list as long as your arm. 

"It would be very nice to 
own an A2000", he says. 
"Then 1 can have a keyboard 
with a long dangly cable". 

His ambition is to become 
excessively rich and one of 
the most respected Amiga 
programmers in the world. 
We suspect he probably will. 



COVER DISC J COVER DISC J COVEf 



Workbench 
Mandelbrot 



THE Mandelbrot set (as 
if you didn't know) is a 
set of points in a complex 
plane with a simple defini- 
tion but a complicated fractal 
structure. 

The equation c = (c* c) + z 
is used recursively to 
generate a sequence of 
values for c starting with c = 



DO you despair of the 
rather limited facili- 
ties of IconEd on your Extras 
disc? Then take a look at 
IconMaster - a complete 
icon designing studio from 
which it is possible not only 
to design the graphics of an 
icon, but also to set all the 
flags and edit the default 
tools as well. 

The flags can be set by 
clicking on the gadgets in the 
top right- hand corner of the 
IconMaster screen. The tool 
editing section is an almost 
exact replica of the tool 
requester used by Info on 
Workbench, so it is familiar 
and easy to use. 

The main screen will also 



>fl I (an I >i i« • 



Uit Default I rut* 



0. The values of z in the 
complex plane for which the 
sequence converges are the 
points of the Mandelbrot set. 
Told you it was simple. 
To see what it looks like, 
double click the Mandelbrot 
icon in Reader-Contribution/ 
Workbench-Mandelbrot. To 
make it a little more inter- 



esting, the points outside the 
set are coloured according to 
how many terms in the 
sequence are generated 
before divergence is 
obvious. 

When it comes to a halt 
you can resize the window 
and then select a rectangle 
for enlargment by passing 
the mouse over it with the 
left button held down. 
Which should give you lime 
to make a cup of coffee. 

Workbench Mandelbrot 
was sent to us by 29-year-old 
CAD Software Engineer, 
Philip Gibbs. He wrote it 
"for something to do" in Lat- 
tice C (v4.0) on a one meg 
A500 with two drives. 



IconMaster 



show you the current icon - 
which will be the default one 
if you have just loaded the 
program — and the alternate 
image as it will appear on the 
Workbench screen. Various 
operations can be performed 
from here, such as deleting, 
swapping and copying the 
images, as well as specifying 
a path name for your own 
custom images to be used as 
defaults in place of the ones 
provided. 

If you choose to Edit either 
of the icon images you will 



progress into the drawing 
studio part of the utility. The 
screen now resembles a 
small art package, which 



funnily enough is exactly 
what it is. 

Some fairly advanced fea- 
tures such as solid or shell 
(outline) circles, text input 
and brush cutting are 
supported. There is also a 
palette containing the stand- 
ard Workbench shades and a 
good selection of Fdl patterns 
using different mixes of the 
default colours. 

There are a few sizing gad- 
gets for determining the 
exact dimensions of your 
masterpiece, as well as a 
rather cunning gadget which 
will move the graphic to the 
top left of the window for 
you - all very handy if you 
are a messy worker. 

Meanwhile, back at the 
main menu, you have the 
choice of loading or saving 
images from or to icons or to 
standard IFF pictures or 
brushes. 

Note that although it will 
read IFF images, anything 
over two bitplanes will not 
produce the expected results. 
This means IconMaster is 
limited to four colours, but 



Picture- 



POOR old Jolyon suf- 
fered a major catastro- 
phe this month when his 
A50Q blew up. Not one to 
take things lying down, he 
went out and boughl a shiny 
new A2000. complete with 
hard drive and Enhanced 
Chip Set. Now all he has to 
do is pay for it. 

Jolyon's demo for October 
features a scrolling hitplane 
in the message at the top and 
Extra HalfBrite Mode in the 
sine wave scrolly. The music 
is once again by Kevin 
"Savage" Collier. Squirt it 
through the hi-fi. Wonderful 
stereo! 

Click on the Picture-This 
icon in the Demo drawer to 
play the demo, or on Ihe 
Picture-This.asm icon to 
view the source code. 




r»oltyH 



V 



Code by 



c o 



Hounimn «< 




52 AMIG.\ CUMPUtlNG October 1989 




..... ..... mm 




V/OQ M P UTINO 



• >' 1—1. 



" - *~— — — - 



I 



then so is any Workbench 
worth using. HAM pictures 
don't work too well either. 

The size of the graphic is 
limited to 314 x 98 pixels, 
more thiui adequate for all 
but the most awesome icons. 

The well written and 
extensive documentation in 
IconMaster.doc claims that 
online help is available by 
pressing the Help key. But 
the only help you are likely 
to get is help relieving you of 
your money. Sigh. That's 
shareware for you. 



d 



FT' 'ft 



O U T I N 



t7 




ozone or 





COVER DISC 



up to 



We are looking for original contri- 
butions for the Amiga Computing 
cover disc. If you think something you 
have written or drawn is good enough 
to share with everybody else who reads 
the magazine, send it along and we will 
have a look. If we like what we see, it 
could earn you up to £1,000. 

Please let us know if your submiss- 
ion needs any files from the 
Workbench disc. Programs which use 
the Amiga's built-in speech can be par- 
ticularly greedy in this respect. 

If your program is clickable from 
Workbench, feel free to design an 
original icon. In fact, we'll pay small 
counts for good icons, even if there is 



no program attached. But don't make 
them too big. And please use the stand- 
ard Workbench colours. 

Bear in mind that a program which 
does not run on a 512k machine would 
have to be exceptionally good to make 
it on to the disc. 

Please enclose this coupon, or a 
photocopy of it, with your submission. 
Include a file on the disc with full 
documentation, your name, address, 
phone number and a few details about 
you and your kit. Don't forget to 
duplicate on the disc label the program 
name, your name, address and phone 
number. If you want your disc back, 
enclose the correct amount in stamps. 



Name 

Address. 



Age years 



Daytime phone 

Evening phone 

Submission name 
Submission size... 



.after am 

.after pm 



.bytes in total 



NOTE: We will accept submissions up to 500k in total length, including 
documentation. But the shorter your submission, the better chance it stands 
of getting on to the disc. If it is a compiled or assembled program, include all 
the source code, but do not count this in the size of the submission. 

Write a brief description of your submission below. If it consists of more 
than one file, describe what each file is for. Attach an extra sheet of paper to 
this form if necessary: 



Sign this declaration: 

The stuff on this disc is mine. I didn't nick it off someone else. It hasn't been 
published before and I haven't submitted it elsewhere because I want 
Amiga Computing to publish it. 



Date. 



Signed 

Post your submission to: Jeff Walker, Amiga Computing. North House. 
78-84 Ongar Road. Brentwood, Essex. CM15 9BG. 



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Access - Visa - Diners Club - American Express 



54 AMIGA COMPUTING October /SS.Y 



■PROGRAMMING! 



Picture 



BEEN messing around with 
copper lists for the last month? 
Want to do something else? What else 
can you do? Well, you could pack 
your bags, buy a one-way ticket to 
Peru and take up breeding guinea 
pigs. Or you could try messing 
-round with bitplanes to get graphics 
into your machine code programs. 

As I know little about Peru, and 
even less about guinea pigs. I will 
attempt to explain the latter - that is, 
how to get graphics on to your screen 
without all that tedious mucking 
around with rast ports that most books 
tell you to do. 

Firstly. I will briefly explain what a 
rastport is so you will know how to 
avoid it. It is a system structure which 
describes a user-defined screen. It 
contains lots of information like the 
lize of the screen, the number of 
bhplanes, what resolution the picture 
i> in and various other pointers to 
othei strange system structures. 

When you write a program that 
needs to multi-task you must access 
the screen via rastports, otherwise the 
poor old Amiga can't work out how 
to build its copper list to display your 
program. 




Jolyon Ralph explains 
bitplanes, hardware 
scrolling and South 
American cuisine 

This is, of course, totally 
unnecessary if your program does not 
need to multi-task. A game, for 
example. 

If you are still interested in Peru, 
you may like to know that its capital 
is Lima and that guinea pigs are part 
of the staple diet in some areas. You 
must have a passport, not a rastport. 
to go to Peru. 

BACK now to setting up a screen. 
First let's assume you have a 
picture you want to display. To keep 



things simple to start with, let's make 
it a 320 x 200 single-bitplane (two 
colour) picture. Let's assume you've 
got a raw bitmap file, not an IFF file. 
If you haven't, look at the box on the 
next page, which will tell you how to 
make one. 

The first thing you have to tell the 
Amiga is the size of the screen you 
are displaying. Unfortunately this is 
not a simple matter of putting 320 in 
one hardware register and 200 in 
another. You will have to work out 
some values for hardware registers 
called DIWSTART, D1WSTOP. 
DDFSTART and DDFSTOP. 

If you look at Figure I you will see 
that DIWSTART and DIWSTOP tell 
the Amiga where the top left-hand 
and bottom right-hand corners of the 
screen you want to display are. 

How Uiese values are worked out is 
a little strange, and a full explanation 
here would only confuse matters. 
You'll find the relevant information in 
the Hardware Reference Manual; 
basically they are offsets from the top 
left-hand corner of the screen. 

For 98 per cent of your 
programming life you can work out 
the values you need for DIWSTART 
and DIWSTOP by altering the 
standard values. 

For a standard NTSC screen - 320 x 
200 in lo-res - DIWSTART is $2c81 
and DIWSTOP is $f4d. This means 
the screen display starts at scanline 
S2c and finishes at scanline $f4. 

For a PAL screen - 320 x 256 in 
lo-res - DIWSTART is the same. 
$2c81, but DIWSTOP is S2cc1. This is 
because $2c plus 256 ($100| is Si 2c. 
and as only a byte value can be used, 
the extra 1 is lost. 

The horizontal values of S81 and 
$cl are fixed for a 320 wide screen 
and only need to be changed if you 
are using an overscan display. 

DDFSTART and DDFSTOP toll the 
Amiga where the left and right edges 
of the display area are. You may be 
wondering why this is needed - 



DIWSTART 



"Uz 

($2c 



/*81) ^ 



AO words wide (320 pi xe Is) 



200 Scan Lines 



1 



($f 4,Sd ) 
(S2c,$c1> 



_ 

Figure I: Amiga screen layout 



Physical 9 c r een bounda r y 




DIWSTOP (NTSC) 
DIWSTOP (PAL) 



October 1989 \ Mlt • < TWt M 



■PROGRAMMING! 



Figure U 

Setting up bitplane 
control register 
0. The bits not 
pointedto are 
either not used 
or not important. 



Set to: 

1 for hi-res, 

0 f or Lo-res . 



Set to: 

1 for HAM sc reen, 
0 for standard. 



BPLCONO ($df f 100) 


15 


14 


13 


12 


i . 1 



5 



Set to 1 to enab Le 
composite video 
colour. 



1 1 



10 



The number of 
bi tplanes (0-6) 



Set to: 

1 for dual playfield, 
0 for standard screen 



I 



Set to: 

1 for interlace, 
0 f or norma I . 



surely the two corners are all that is 
required to define a display area? But 
DDFSTART and DDFSTOP can point 
to a different position to that in 
DIWSTART and DIWSTOP so that a 
portion of the screen is not shown. 

This is useful if you are scrolling 
the screen and want to update the 



picture on a part of the screen that is 
not visible - advanced stuff, and 
beyond the scope of this article. In 
general DDFSTART and DDFSTOP 
can be worked out from the values 
you set DIWSTART and DIWSTOP. 

Again, this involves complex 
formulae to work out. If you feel 
inclined to do so - and you will only 
need to do this if you want to use 



Making a raw bitmap data file 



RAW data files contain all the 
bitplane data in sequential 
order. They can also contain the 
colour palette. FFF files contain 
compressed screen data plus data 
on screen type, size and can also 
be compressed. However it is 
much easier to use raw data files in 
your programs. 

The program IFFconverter 
supplied on this month's cover 
disc converts an IFF file - saved 
from DPaint or any other graphics 
package - into a raw data file. It 
can also turn IFF files into sprite 
data, so keep it handy for next 
month. 

To convert a standard IFF 
picture into a bitmap of the same 
size as your original IFF file, 
choose Load:IFF and Save:Bitmap 
from the Project menu. Type in 
your filename and click on the 
Save gadget. 

To convert a standard IFF 
picture into a bitmap of a different 
size to your original file, do the 



same as above but choose the 
Frame-Save gadget instead. You 
can then mark out the area you 
wish to convert. 

To convert a bitmap back into an 
IFF file you must first know how 
many bitplanes the picture has, 
plus the dimensions of each. 
Choose Project:Load:Bitmap. enter 
the relevant information and you 
can then save the picture as an IFF 
file. 

You can also cut out an area and 
save it as sprite data, either in 
binary format or as a source file to 
be incorporated into your demos. 
The bouncing King Tut in last 
month's demo was done using this. 

Bitmap files can include an 
optional colour palette table, which 
makes it easier to set up the 
colours in your program, especially 
with 16 or 32 colour pictures. This 
table can either be at the end - the 
default - or the front of your raw 
graphics file. 



overscan - I recommend you look at 
the Amiga System Programmers 
Guide by Abacus, which explains the 
method of calculation very well. 

In general you will only need to use 
$38 and SdO respectively for 
DDFSTART and DDFSTOP if you are 
using a lo-res screen (anything with a 
width of 320 pixels), and S3c and Sd4 
if you are using a hi-res screen. In 
this context hi-res is any screen with 
a 640 pixel horizontal width - the 
Workbench screen for example, 
which is classed as a med-res screen. 

Confused? Blame Commodore, not 
me. 



ONCE you have the complexities 
of the DIWSTART/STOP and 
DDFSTART/STOP out of the way, the 
rest is pretty straightforward. The 
next hardware register you have to set 
is called BPLCONO - BitPLane 
COtftrol 0. With this register you set 
the number of bitplanes in the 
picture, as well as telling the Amiga if 
you want a lo-res or a hi-res screen or 
whether you want HAM mode or a 
dual playfield display. The register's 
format is shown in Figure II. 

For our example BPLCONO would 
be set to $1200 - one bitplane, no 
hi-res, colour enabled. A four- 
bitplane, med-res screen would be 
$c200. 

You now have most of the hard 
work out of the way. But a few minor 
registers still need setting. BPLCONl 
(Sdffl02) is the smooth horizontal 



56 AMIGA tXtMPUTING October 1989 



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spending upon the software An eude lead »s supplied tor connecting to I he headphone 
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■nciuded. and the mono version also has an LED overload indicate* A public domain 
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Ck tobcr 198!) AMIGA COMPUTING 57 



■PROGRAMMING! 



scrolling register; set this to zero for 
the moment. 

BP1.1MOD (SdfflOB) handles 
bitplanes 1, 3 and 5 while BPL2MOD 
(SdfflOa) handles bitplanes 2, 4 and 6. 
They determine the number of words 
missed off the end of each line before 
the next line of graphics data is 
displayed. If these were set to 40 it 
will miss out an entire line on a 
normal screen before displaying each 
new line, hence making the display 
look half its normal height, A normal 
display should set both to zero. 

Now you will need to set up the 
colours for your picture. The colour 
registers - there are 32 of them - start 
at SdfflBO. For our single bitplane 
screen we only need to set the first 
two. 

The colour is calculated in hex by 
taking the value of 0 to 15 for each of 
the red, green and blue components — 
as shown in the Deluxe Paint palette 
window - and converting it into a 



hex digit. For example, black is $000, 
white is Sfff, blue is $00f and yellow 
SffO. 

The last things we have to set up 
are the bitplane pointers - called 
BPLxPT, where x is the bitplane 
number, 1 to 6. This tells the Amiga 
where our graphics data is stored in 



/ You have to reset 
the bitplane pointers 
every time the screen 
is displayed f 



memory. Graphics data can only be 
stored in chip memory, the lowest 
512k at the moment. You will soon be 
able to use a meg of chip memory 
when the enhanced chip set (ECS) is 
released. 

You will be pleased to know that 
all you have to do is throw the 



address of each bitplane into these 
registers and that's it. 



COULDN'T be simpler, could it? 
Well, actually, it could. There's 
one little snag. While the bitplane is 
being displayed on screen, these 
registers are updated. Every time one 
word of data is taken from memory 
and displayed on the monitor, the 
bitplane pointers are changed to point 
at the next word. 

The outcome is that by the time the 
Amiga has finished displaying a 320 x 
200 pixel screen the pointers are all 
8,000 bytes higher than you set them. 
This means you have to reset the 
bitplane pointers every time the 
screen is displayed - every fiftieUi of 
a second in Europe. 

Before those of you who have 
programmed other machines start 
muttering strange things like timing 
loops and interrupts. I must point out 



•« This will set up a 1 bitplane 320*200 pixel screen. 
** NEEDS TO BE IN CHIP MEMORY. 



SECTION Scrn,CODE-C 



OpenLib 


equ 


-552 


CloseLib 


equ 


-414 


diwstart 


equ 


S8e 


diwstop 


equ 


590 


ddf start 


equ 


$92 


ddf stop 


equ 


S94 


bp I con0 


equ 


S1B0 


bp I c on 1 


equ 


5102 


CO10 


equ 


S180 


coll 


equ 


S182 


bpUpth 


equ 


Se0 


bpllptl 


equ 


Se2 



; Needed for DevPac 2. 

; Offset for OpenLibrary. 
; Offset for Closelibrary. 

; Screen hardware registers. 



** Because the copper list needs to love the address of our 
*• screen lenory in two 16 bit words rather than one 32 bit 
** long word, we iust split the long word into two words 
** and put then in the copper list. 

■ove.l #screen,d0 ; Get address of our screen leiory. 
■ove.w d0,plU ; Move the low word into the copper list, 
swap d0 ; Swap the low and high words in d0. 

■ove.w d0,pl1h ; Move the high word into the copper list 



■ove. I 4.w,a6 
lea gfxna»e(PC) ,al 
noveq #0,d0 
jsr Open L i b < a6) 
■ove.l d0,a1 
■ove.l 38<aU,old 
■ove.l 4.w,a6 
isr CloseLib(a6) 



Get EXECBASE. 

Point to graphics. library 1 string, 

Ignore version number. 

Open the libr»ry. 

Store library address. 

Store workbench copper address. 

Get EXECBASE again. 

Close the library. 



■ove.l #new,Sdff!8i ; Set new copper. 

; Check for left aouse button. 



bne.s loop ; Loop until pressed. 

■ove.l old,Sdff080 ; Restore old copper list, 
rts 



new: 



; Start of our copper list. 



dew diwstart,S2c8t ; Top left corner of screen, 

dew diwstop,SHc1 ; Bottoi right corner of screen, 

dew ddf start ,S38 ; Data fetch start, 

dew ddfstop,5d0 ; Data fetch stop. 

dew bplcon0, 51200 ; Set BPLCON0 to 1 bitplane lo-res. 

dew bplcon1,S0 ; No horizontal offset. 



dew col0,S0 
dew coll ,Sf f f 

dew bpMpth 
pLIh 
dew 0 

dew bpllptl 
plU 
dew 0 

dew SffM,$fffe 
old del 0 



loop: 

btst *6,Sbfe001 



Black background colour. 
White foreground colour. 

Bitplane high word. 



Bitplane low word. 



End copper list. 



screen: dcb.b 8000,553 ; This is a block of 8000 bytes of 
; i set pattern (change deb to blk for 
; the K-SEKA assembler). 

gfxnaae deb 'graphics. library',0 

»« If you have a raw picture file of 320 x 200 size in 1 bitplane 
M you can replace the DCB.8 8000,555 with an INCBIN "filename* 
** co em and (Devpac 2 only) which will load in your graphics data 
»* when assembling. 

** End of listing. 



SB AMIGA COMPUTING October 198ft 



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October 1989 AMIGA COMPt 1 ISC 59 



■PROGRAMMING! 



Unused 



Offset 0 to 15 
for even planes 



BPLC0N1 (Sdf f 102) 


15 


14 


13 


12 


1 1 


10 


9 


8 


7 


6 


5 


4 


3 


2 


1 


0 





































Offset 0 to 15 for odd planes 



Figure III: Setting up BPLCON1, the smooth 
horizontal scrolling register. 



that there is a very easy way to 
update these pointers - use a copper 
list. 

In fact it's easier to set up the whole 
screen from a copper list - that's what 
the copper was designed for. The 
example listing will show you how to 
set up our simple one-bitplane screen. 

Note, though, that because an 
address is a 32 bit number — although 
only 24 bits are used on the 68000 - 
and the copper can only move 16 bits 
at n time, you need two copper moves 
for each bit plane pointer. Because of 
this each BPLxPT register is often 
split into two separate hardware 
registers. BPIjtPTH and BPLxPTL for 
the high and low words of the 
address respectively. 

If you've got the one-bitplane 
screen working, why not try to 
convert it to use five bitplanes? First 
you must set BPLCONO to S5200 
instead of $1200, then you must add 
in the other four bitplane pointers. 

Convert a five-bitplane picture to a 
raw file. Make sure it is a 320 x 200 
picture. King Tut on the Deluxe Paint 
disc for example. If you want to use a 
320 x 256 picture you will have to 
change DIWSTOP to $2c81, otherwise 
you will lose the bottom. Don't forget 
you will have to set all 32 colour 
registers now, not just the first two. 

There is an option in IFFconverter 
to append the palette information to 
the end of the bitmap file. You can 
then read the palette and copy it 
straight into the colour registers, or 
into your copper list if you are setting 
it up from there. This saves a lot of 
time and effort, and you can put a 



different picture in your program 
without having to work out the 
palette every time. 



NOW you've got a 32-colour 
picture on the screen, here are 
a few more things that you can do. If 
you change the bitplane pointers by 
adding or subtracting a multiple of 
the number of bytes in a line - 
usually 40 — you can achieve smooth 
vertical hardware scrolling, as used in 
some of the better shoot-'em-ups. 

You must make sure that the 
beginning and end of your graphics 
data is padded with enough blank 
memory, or you will find rubbish 
being scrolled on the top or bottom of 
your screen. 

By adding or subtracting 2 to each 
bitplane pointer - you cannot add 1 
as the pointers must always be even - 
you can achieve rough horizontal 
scrolling - rough in that you can only 
move the screen 16 pixels at a time by 
this method. 

Remember I mentioned BPLCONl, 
the smooth horizontal scrolling 
register? This is what comes to the 
rescue. It can offset the screen 
horizontally by 0 to 15 pixels. So by a 
combination of changing the bitplane 
pointers by plus or minus 2 and 
setting the smooth value in BPLCONl 
you can achieve totally smooth, 50 
frames a second, horizontal hardware 
scrolling. The Atari ST cannot do this, 
which is why the horizontal scrolling 
games on that machine are so bad. 

Another common trick used in 
games is the dual playfield. This sets 
up the bitplanes as usual, but divides 



the screen into two separate screens, 
or playfields. The odd bitplanes (1, 3 
and 5) are one playfield and the even 
bitplanes (2, 4 and 6) are the other. 

Most hardware registers either have 
duplicates for odd and even bitplanes 
- for example, BPL1MOD and 
BPL2MOD - or have separate bits to 
be set for the odd and the even 
planes, like BPLCONl in Figure HI. 

This means that the two playfields 
can be set up differently and can be 
scrolled in different directions at the 
same time, a technique commonly 
used in games where a background is 
scrolled slowly and the foreground 
contains spaceships scrolling in a 
different direction. 

Hold and Modify (HAM) uses a 
different type of screen format 
altogether, and although hardware 
scrolling is possible, it's not 
recommended because all sorts of 
mess appears on the screen unless 
you are very careful — and very 
clever. 

OK. You should now be able to set 
up your own screen using a copper 
list, and it should be obvious that you 
can change the registers in the copper 
list at a particular position to swap to 
a different graphic screen. 

This is what the system copper list 
does when you have a program 
running, say DPaint, and you drag the 
screen down so you can see the 
Workbench in med-res at the top and 
DPaint in low-res at the bottom. By 
changing the wait before the second 
screen you can scroll the second 
screen over the first, or make it 
bounce up and down. 

• NEXT MONTH: Hardware sprites. 



60 AMIGA COMPUTING October 1939 




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Monochrome Monitor 



£9996 



EXTERNAL DRIVE 
Cumane 1 Meg C109 



CITIZEN 120D PRINTER 
£14996 



10 3V _M Discs £9 95 

Joysoci Extenders f 4 95 

4 Player Adaptors £4 95 
Mouse Mat ft 95 

Oveetan 126 Joystick C6.9S 

05 Turbo Joystick C9.9S 



Konlx Navigator 

Joystick C1 1.95 

Pro $000 Joystick £12.95 

Pro 5000 Clear £12.95 

Pro 5000 Extra £13.95 

Disc storage Box 40 £5.95 

Disc storage Box 80 £7.95 



CHEQUES AND POSTAL ORDERS PAYABLE TO SOFTSELL- 
ERS POST AND PACKING FREE IN UK. OVERSEAS f 1.50 per 
item. Subject to availability and price change without 
notice. Not all titles released at time of going to press. 

Shop prices may vary, but personal callers can claim 
advertised discounts on production ol cut-off flip. 



Licence to 101 .S. Z ~_T_._ Z 

Lomberd RAC. RaUy IS— ... 

Lords of Tha Rising Sun ___________ ~_ 

LestNinie2 KM - 

Lost Patrol 1399 ... 

Leisure Sun Larry 2 1999 

Liverpool .„..—_,,—.. 15.99 ... 

Menace .____ 1399 .- 

Mtcraprcio soccer ___________ 151. 

Mr. He. 1599 .... 

Mi|ic Johnson .__——.— 12.99 .... 

Murders in Venice 1599...- 

Matrix Mireuders — _______ 16 99 . 

1943 13.99 

New Zealand story 13.99. 

Mortn and South 12-99 ... 

Weutomencer — -. _> 

Nevermind . —-—.—.......—-.—_ 16 99 

Operation Wot 1299 

OutiunEuropa in 1099 . 

Orients! 15.99. 

Paland , , , 12.99 . 

Pacmania _ _ 12.99 . 

Paperboy — — 12.99 . 

Potto Quest 2 15.99. 

Pools Of Radiance 12.99. 

Populous _______ 17.99 . 

Populous Data Discs — — 9 99 . 

Powerdrome ________ — _ 17.99 . 

Precious Metal (Compilation) 16 99 . 

Premier Collection (Compilation) 19.99 . 

Personal Nightmare _____._. 

Predetor ...—_—.__, 

Passing Shot _ ■ _ 

Pictionary 

Panic Station ... — _, 



QuatarBack 

Quest for Time Bird. 

Red Heat 

Renegade ..______ 

R*k Dangerous — 
Robocop.- 
Rocket Ringer 
Run The Gusntlet — 
Running Man ._— - 

P_VF. 

RSR.__ 

Rainbow liiands 

Risk 

SEUCX — 

Silkworm ———______. 

Skwaek 

Space Quest 3 — — — — 

Spaadbel — ,___—. 

Star glider 2 . .,-_——-—_—. 

Siava Davu Snooker ___.._ 

S.T.0.e\ 

Story So Far 1 — .— 

Story So Par 3 

Slum car _____ _ _„ 

Stun obi .______- 

Street Rghtmg Man _ 

Scroll 

Sword Of Twilight 

Shadow Of The Beast 

Starwars Compilation n ■ 

Shufliepuck Cafe 

Super Scramble Simulator _____ 

Super Wonderboy -.__—_ 

Slip heed _____ 

Sleeping Gods Ue 

Test Drive 2 

Thunder bird I ..—.—.—_—_. 

TVSporuFootbel 

Trivial Pursuit (Family Edition) 

Ultimate Golf 

UMS 2 

Uromi V 

Vigilante.-... ___.___—_.._■—. 

Voyager .__ _________ 

War In Middle Earth 

Waterloo ______________ 

W.E.C. Le Mans 

Xybota __.________L_____- 



1399 
_13 99 
.16 99 
1399 
1299 
19 99 
1399 
13 99 
1599 
13 99 
IB 99 
. 1399 
.15 99 
1599 
1599 
15 99 
.1299. 

19 99 
.. 1299 
. 13 99 . 
.13 99 
.16 99 
15 99 
.12 99 
.19 99 
17 99 
. 12.99 
.15.99 
12 99 
12.99 
1299 



AMHU 
13.99 

16 99 

21.99 

..-16.99 

1699 

..-.19 99 
.... 15 99 
..... 13.99 
,..1599 

15.99 

..... 1299 
..... 15.99 
... 1699 
.....16.99 
.16 99 

1299 

....17 99 

1659 

1699 

10 99 

.....15.99 
.1299 
.1299 
-.1299 
..... 1599 
.....17.99 
—.17.99 
-..999 
.... 17.99 
..... 16.99 
-.19.99 



16.99 
.16.99 

16 99 
.13 99 

12 99 
.19 99 

1699 

16 99 

1599 
.1699 

2199 

16 99 
.1599 
.15.99 

1599 
.15 99 

1299 
.19.99 

12 99 
.13.99 
.1999 
. 16 99 
.15.99 

1299 



16 99 . 

1399 

13 99 

1399 

1999 

1599 

T5.99 ! 

16 99 
.16 99 

1399 
1599 

.1599 
1099 

.13 99 

17 99 
1599 

.1399 
.15 99 
13 99 



1299 
1799 
1599 
1799 
1299 
.1299 
1799 
.7199 
.16 99 
1399 
13 99 
16 99 
. 19 99 

15 99 
. 15 99 

1599 
19 99 

16 99 
1399 
1599 

. 1599 
. 1099 
. 16 99 
.17 99 
. 15 99 
16 99 
.19 99 
13 99 



TITLE 




TOTAL COST £ 



COMP 



COST 



Name 

Address 



................ 







I F - ■ 



TpI Nn 




AMC October 





COME 2 Williams Clowes Street 
TO THE Bursleni 
PROFESSIONALS!!!! Stoke on Trend 

ST6 3AP 

NOW TAKEN v} Tel: 0782 575043 



AMIGA 
REDUCTIONS 

Manhunter in New York 29.95 1 2.95 

Garfield 24.95 7.95 

Phantasm 24.95 5.95 

Hyperdrome 19.95 5.95 

Artura 19.95 5.95 

Return of the Jedi 24.95 9.95 

F-16 Combat Pilot 24.95 15.95 

King of Chicago 29.95 8.95 



BISMARK 
RRP £24.95 
Our Price £9.95 



Battletech 29.95 14.95 

Running Man 24.95 9.95 

Thunderbirds 24.95 14.95 

Peter Beardsleys Football 24.95 7.95 

Pacland 24.95 7.95 

Gold Rush 29.95 12.95 

Leisure Suit Larry 1 24.95 12.95 

Police Quest 1 24.95 12.95 

Nigel Mansells G Prix 24.95 5.95 

After Burner 24.95 9.95 

Roger Rabbit 29.95 7.95 

Krystal 29.95 12.95 

Pioneer Plague 24.95 4.99 

Football Manager II 19.95 9.95 

Vindicators 24.95 9.95 

Xybots 24.95 15.95 

Fire Power 24.95 6.95 

Tracers 24.95 3.99 

Ebon Star 24.95 3.99 

Galactic Invasion 24.95 3.99 

Action Service 24.95 3.99 

Thexder 24.95 3.99 

Marias Xmas Box 24.95 5.95 

Space Quest 1 24.95 12.95 

Space Quest 2 24.95 12.95 

Real Ghostbusters 24.95 9.95 

Robbeary 24.95 5.95 

W. Class Leaderboard 9.95 7.50 

Marble Madness 24.95 7.50 

Outrun 19.95 7.50 

Bards Tale 24.95 7.50 

Incred. Shrinking Sphere 24.95 5.95 

Indoor Sports 24.95 4.99 

Academy 24.95 6.95 

Winter Olympiad 24.95 5.95 

Armageddon Man 24.95 3.99 

GFL Football 29.95 4.99 

World Tour Golf 24.95 7.50 

Mini Golf 19.95 6.99 



AMIGA 
SPECIAL OFFERS 

Wicked 24.95 9.95 

RType 24.95 9.95 

Time Scanner 24.95 9.95 

IK+ 24.95 9.95 

Xbots 24.95 14 95 

Dominator 24.95 12.95 

Running Man 24.95 9.95 

Lombard Rally 24.95 14.95 

Deluxe Paint 3 79.95 54.95 

Teenage Queen 24.95 .95 

Hostages 24.95 7.95 

Leather Goddess 29.95 6.99 



^SB^TRIAD 

Starglider, Defender of 
the Crown, Barbarian 

RRP £29.95 
Our Price £9.95 



Nord & Bert 29.95 6.99 

Sherlock 29.95 6.99 

Bureaucracy 29.95 6.99 

Plundered Hearts 29.95 6.99 

Hint Books for the above 
only £2.99 each 

Scorpion 24.95 15.99 

DejaVu 29.95 8.99 

Wanted 19.95 4.99 

Billiard Sim 24.95 4.99 

Division 1 19.95 5.99 

Stargoose 19.95 4.99 

Fun School 2 6-8 24.95 12.99 

Fun School 2 8-12 24.95 12.99 

Fun School 2 over 12's ...24.95 12.99 

Dungeon Master (1 meg)24.95 15.95 

Elite 24.95 15.95 

Hellfire Attack 24.95 3.99 

Falcon Mission Discs each19.95 13.95 

Bloodwytch 24.95 15.99 

Let Sleeping Gods Lie 24.95 15.99 

Kult 24.95 15.99 

Chariots of Wrath 24.95 15.99 

New Zealand Story 24.95 16.99 

Red Heat 24.95 16.99 

RoboCop 24.95 16.99 

Proprietors FA and RA Beoch 



AMIGA 
SPECIAL OFFERS 

War in Middle Earth 24.95 14.! 

Hawkeye 19.95 13.! 

Populus 24.95 17.9! 

Phobia 24.95 15.! 

Forgotten Worlds 19.95 14.! 

3D Pool 24.95 15.9! 

Steve Davis Snooker 24.95 15.9< 

Pirates 24.95 15.! 

Honda RVF 24.95 15.9! 

Balance of Power 1990. ..24.95 15.9! 

Weird Dreams 24.95 15.9 

Lords of Rising Sun 29.95 20.95 

Legend 19.95 11.9! 

Bards Tale 2 24.95 16.! 

Silkworm 19.95 12.! 

Millenium 2.2 24.95 15.9! 

Skweek 24.95 14.99 

Rocket Ranger 29.95 17.95 

Photon Paint (no box!) 

just disc + instructions ..79.95 19.95 

Faery Tale Adventure 44.95 8.95 



For 1 month only: 

WAYNE 
GRETSKI 
ICE HOCKEY 

nnn C20.00 

£19.95 



Virus Killer for the 
Amiga as endorsed by 
Commodore 
themselves 
ONLY £7.95 



We offer a fast reliable service 
Cheque's P.O's to: 

CASTLE SOFTWARE 

Any games not listed phone 
our Hotline now on 
0782 575043 



GJ AMIGA COMPt'TIS'G October 1989 




! 'i 


■11 


i ■ 

1 ■ 


in 





a: 



US TW 



4 




I 




T II 



PRINTERS 



STAR LC10ICOLOUR) 


... . C239.95 


STAR LC24/10 24PIN 


£299.00 




£189.95 


PANASONIC KX-P1081 . _ 


. £175.00 


PANASONIC KX-PU24 


£299.95 


* ALL PRINTER RIBBONS IN STOCK * 


JOYSTICKS 


2«OUC*SHOtl 


ONLY £11.00 


DATE* HAND BLASTER 




NEW MICRO BLASTER 


£3.95 



A EXCLUSIVE A500 OFFER 



COMPRISIIMG-COMMODORE A500. 
EXTRAS-WORK BENCH 1.3, MANUALS. 




PLUS • MODULATOR KM TV USE • COMMODORt SPORTS BAG • MOUSE MAI 
• 5 FREE TDK 3 V DISKS 

PLUS * QUAUTV 

• SPfflTZ PAINT 

• VERY FIRST TUTORIAL 

• NEW ZEALAND STORY 

• ROGER RABBIT 

• POWER PLAY 

• QUASAR 

• NO EXCUSE 

• NEBUIUS 

• STAR RAY 

• CUSTODIAN 

• ZYNAPS 



ALL THIS FOR ONLY £399.00 




! 



I 




1L!' 
II 



TAPE AND DISK ACCESSORIES 



25 2V OSOD CERTIFIED DISKS 

10 3*' OSOD TDK DISKS 

(No I in iho world MEM CON REPORT! 



£23.95 



(MRP f?995) 

A 590 ?Qmg AMIGA HARD DISK 
CUMANA 3S" Img DRIVE AMIGA 
PHILIPS CM8833. hgh Quaitv 

colour 

REPLACEMENT 

AMIGA POWER SUPPIY 

AMIGA KiMPSTON MOUSE 



ONLY f 14.95 
£399.00 
Q 9.95 

£279.95 

£4955 
£7995 




(NORMALLY £729.34 ■ SO YOU SAVE £330.341 




SEND FOR 

FREE 
CATALOGUE 



Postage and Picking. 
UK Under £50 Add £2 00 Under £100 Add £5 00 
Over £100 Add £10 00 
Courier Delivery 
Europe Full pries shown coven carnage 
Non European Add 5% Visa. Maslerchaige. Postgiro 
International accepted NOT Postbanh Post cheque 



ALL PRICES INCLUDE VAT 

051-691 2008 
051-630 5396 
051 639 2714 FAX NUMBER 



GREAT £toaCo# DEALS 




ACCESSORIES 



Magic Stage 

Mouse Mat E19.99 

Mouse Mat £4.99 

Master 

Cleaning Kit 3.5" £19.99 



AMIGA 500 pk Inc. A500 AMIGA 500 + 1084S pk 1084S MONITOR, Colour 3.5" Storage Box £14.99 

P.S.U., Mouse, Modula- Same as A500pk but with Monitor with Stereo 3.5" Travel Wallet £9.99 

tor, First Tutorial, Work- Stereo Colour Monitor Sound, Compatible with A500 Dust Cover £9.99 

bench 1 .3, PLUS 6 Great C64 + Amiga Mouse for A500 £29.95 

Games 




P.O. Box 33 

10 Barley Mow Passage, 

Chiswick, 

London 

W4 4PH 

Delivery within 14 days 



MPS1230PRINTER,Dual HOLLY WOOD pk Inc. C64, A1010 Ext. Disk Drive, Cheques/POs payable to :- 

Interface, Compatible with 1530 Data Cassette Quick- 3.5", Capacity 880K ElectraComp 

A500 + C64 ShOt II + 1 0 Great CommO- Prices subject to Availability & are 

dore pk Games subject to change without notice 



Octnlnv I9H9 AMIGA COMPinsr. *J 



EUROPE'S LARGEST CHAIN OF 

AMIGA CENTRES 



DIAMOND COMPUTER 
SYSTEMS LTD 
114 Lodge Road 
Southampton 
Hants 
Tel: 0703 232777 
Fax No: 0703 232676 

SOUTH 



LAN COMPUTER 
SYSTEMS LTD 

1045/1047 High Road 
Chadwell Heath 
Romford, Essex 
Tel: 01-597 8851 

Fax No: 01-590 6057 

LONDON 



LHC MICRO SALES 
121 Regent Street 
Leamington Spa 
Warwickshire 
Tel: 0926 429211 
Tel: 0926 312155 

Fax No: 0926 883234 

MIDLANDS 



INTRODUCING THE NEW DIAMOND VALUE PACK 
Amiga A500, Mouse, Workbench, BASIC, Tutorial, Utilities, Manuals, TV- 
Modulator, Plus Ten Star Value Pack 
SELECT TEN DIAMONDS FROM THE LIST BELOW: 



Quickshot I ♦ 
Quickshotll 
Mouse Mat ♦ 
A500 Dust Cover ♦ 
Marble Madness ♦ 
10x3.5" D/S D/D Disks 
Amegas ♦ 
Three Stooges 
Goldrunner ♦ 
Spritz4* 
Drum 

Art of Chess ♦ 
Barbarian Ult. Warrior ♦ 



Buggy Boy ♦ 
Ikari Warriors ♦ 
Insanity Fight ♦ 
Mercenary Comp ♦ 
Terrorpods ♦ 
Vixen ♦ 

Hellfire Attack ♦ 
Photon Paint 
Thundercats ♦ 
Hellbent ♦ 

Better Dead Than Alien ♦ 
3.5" Cleaning Kit ♦ 
Backlash ♦ 



Driller ♦ 

Winter Olympiad ♦ 
International Soccer ♦ 
Wizball ♦ 
Quadralien ♦ 
ECO* 
Attack ♦ 
Hacker II ♦ 

ONLY 

£379.00 mc 



EUROPE'S LARGEST AMIGA CENTRES 



AMIGA A500 
Including: Mouse, Workbench, 
Basic, Tutorial, Utilities, 
Manuals, Modulator 

AMIGA A500/ 

PHILIPS 8833 

Inc Accessories 



£287 



AMIGA B2000 

Including: Mouse, Workbench, 
Basic, Utilities, Enhanced Manual 
Imported Machine ..£689 UK Machine . 

AMIGA B2000/PHILIPS 8833 

Inc. Accessories 



£769 
£875 



£465 



AMIGA A500 

Including: Mouse, Workbench, Basic, Tutorial, 

Utilities, Manuals, 3 Games, Modulator, 

Art Package, 500 Air Miles £399 



AMIGA B2000/ 
PHILIPS 8833 

Including: Mouse, Workbench, 

Basic, Utilities, Manuals, XT Bridge Board, 

20Mb Hard Disk. Works 



£1245 



DISK DRIVES 

A590 20Mb, 2Mb RAM -£325* 
49Mb, Aulobooi, Fast File tor 
B20OO-£495+ 

External 3.5' Drive with on/otf switch & thru 

port only £65+ 

Internal B2000 Drive - £59+ 

32Mb PC/A2000 Portionable Hard Disk- 

£209+ 



68020 CO- XT BRIDGE 
PROCESSOR BOARD 
£295 Inc. VAT £299 Inc. VAT 



MONITORS 

1084 (CBMJ-C179+ 
1084S (CBM)-£195+ 
Philips 8833 -£189+ 
Philips 8852 - £209+ 
NEC Multisync II - £399+ 
20* Multisync -£1895+ 
New Diamond Multisync Monitor £395 

8Mb RAMBOARD 
FOR B2000 
£458.85 
Inc. + Free X-Cad 




PRINTERS 



NewlX-40O-£14S* 

Epson LX-800-C139. 

Star LC-10-C119 

Star LC-10Colour-El59 

Okimate 20 -El 20+ 

LC-24-10-C199 

KXP-1 1-24- £249 

Star laser B-£ 1249. 

Panasonic KXP-1180-E159* 

Epson IQ500 -£259+ 



UPGRADE YOUR A500 OR A1000 TO A NEW 
B2000 FOR ONLY £599 (A1000 £699) 



64 AMIGA COMPUTING October 1989 



SOFTWARE HOTLINE 
01-597 8851 



TOP TEN AMIGA TITLES 

* Kick Off 12.95 

* The Duel 16.99 

J fafcon - 16.99 

• Dungeon Master 16.99 

i fed. of Free Traders 19.99 

• Gunsnlp 16.99 

J.BH 16.99 

I Grand Prix Circuit 16.99 

i Millenium 2.2 1699 

■0 Kurt 1699 




SOFTWARE HOTLINE 
01-597 8851 



NEW RELEASES 




Waterloo.. 


1699 


S.E.U.C.K. 


....19.99 


Allen Legion _ 


....16.49 


Dominator 


16.49 


Licence to Kill 


..-.12.95 


Robocop _ 


16.99 


New Zealand Story 


....16.99 


Hawkeyt „ 


...14.95 


Tom & Jerry . — „ 


....14.95 



UTILITIES 

Amiga DOS Express 2099 

Calligrapher 55.95 

Cli-Mate 24.45 

Disk 2 Disk 24.45 

Disk Master 29.95 

DOS 2 DOS 29.95 

Ennancer 10.49 

Gizmo 2 Productivity 

Set V2.0 » 16.49 

Gom1V2.1 24.95 

K-Gadget 2095 

K-Roget 34.95 

Maxidesk 48.95 

Power Windows 2.0 52.29 

Quarterback 36.00 

Virus XV1.21 9.95 

Word Perfect Library 7669 




WORD PROCESSORS 



Becker Text 


——.83.95 


Excellence 


139.95 


Kindwords V2.0 - 


30.00 


K-Text2 


41.95 


LPD Writer VI. 0 


83.95 


Pro Text 


69.95 


Prowrlte V2.0 

Text Pro 


59.49 

34.00 


Textcrafl. 


34.00 


Vlzawrtte Desktop 


69.95 


WordPerfect 4.1 

Write and File 


159.00 

69.95 



ALL PRICES INCLUDE V.A.T. 




COMPUTER AIOEO 
DESIGN 

Aegis Draw 2000 139.95 

Dynamic CA0V2.3 346 50 

ntroCAD 41.95 

x CAD Designer 69.95 

« CAD Professional 349.00 

DATABASES 

Acfluisltton V1 .3 1 73.95 

Data Retrieve , — 34.95 

Mi Retrieve Professional 139.95 

■ Man 104.95 

form Master 34.95 

"•Data — 34.95 

Ml- Amiga File „ „ 34.95 

Supemase Personal 41.95 

Superbase Personal 2.— —69 95 
Superbase Professional 174.95 

DESKTOP PUBLISHING 

Oty Desk V1.2 69 95 

City Desk V2.0 „_..•. 104 95 

Page Setter 55 95 



MUSIC 

A-Drum - 27.95 

Aegis Audiomaster 32.29 

Aegis SonixV2.0~ 39.95 

Deluxe Music Con Set 48.95 

Hot 'n' Cool Jazz 6.95 

Instant Music 16.49 

KCS , ___139 95 

Music Studio ....16.49 

Muslc-X- — 209.95 

Pro Sound Tool Kit 24.49 

Rock 'n* Roll _.6.95 

SoundScape Pro Midi Studio .... 1 29.49 

Synthla 55.95 

Ultimate Sound Tracker 27.95 

Dr. T's System Controller 1 39 95 

SPREADSHEETS 

K-Spread2 41.95 

Maxlplan A500 69.95 

Maxiplan Plus 104.95 

Superplan 69.95 

VIP Professional 69.95 

BBC Emulator 34.95 



ART ft GRAPHICS 



Aegis Video TltJer 76.96 

Aegis Videoscape 30 V2.0 99.00 

Animate 30 , 87.49 

Comic Setter..._ 48.95 

Deluxe Art Parts Vol 1 6.95 

Deluxe Art Parts Vol 2 6.95 

Deluxe Paint II 48.95 

Deluxe Photo Lab ..._.„ 48.95 

Deluxe Productions 34.95 

Deluxe Video V2.1 97.95 

Dlgi Paint 2.0-PAL 48.95 

The Director —.41.95 

Express Paint V2.0 39.95 

Fancy 30 Fonts ....34.95 

fantavtsion - 27.96 

Graphlcraft 16.49 

Icon Paint , — 1045 

Lights, Camera, Action 39.95 



Movie Setter 48.95 

Page Flipper Plus F/X 83.95 

Pnoton video: Cell Animator 83.95 

Photon Paint 48.95 

Ptxmale 34.95 

Prtntmaster Plus 34.95 

Prism Plus 41.95 

Pro Video Plus 144.95 

Sculpt 3D 59.50 

Sculpt 40 279.96 

Seasons & Holidays 6.95 

Shoot em up Con Set 1 8.49 

Spntz 34.95 

TV Show .. —_. 48.95 

TV Text 48.95 



Video Effects 104 95 

Video Magic 55.95 



IBM EMULATOR £5.00 




TOP QUALITY 

3.5" DS/DD 
GUARANTEED 

BULK DISKS 

10 „ 7 00 

^5 ........... i.,****!*,**!***.*,**..**,***^,.. r .. . 13.00 

50 , 25.00 

100 48.00 

200 94.00 

PRICES INCLUDE LABELS 
AddC4.95 for 80 cap. 
Disk Box only when ordering Disks 




Quickshot 1 

Quicksnot2Turbo. 



.4.95 

.9.95 



THEU.K.s FIRST 

AMIGA 

ARCADE 
AT 114 LODGE ROAD 
SOUTHAMPTON 



DIAMOND SOFTWARE CLUB - Tel: 0703 338933 

FOR THE FIRST TIME WE ARE OFFERING AMIGA COMPUTING READERS THE CHANCE TO JOIN OUR SOFTWARE CLUB FOR ONLY £20 
WHAT DO I GET AS A MEMBER? 

As a member you will receive 30% off retail on all latest software, a Bi-monthly newsletter (from Sept.), a free T-shirt, one free title from the list below, and 
access to our software part exchange library at 1 14 Lodge Road, Southampton. Also members receive cut price arcade use. 
I f\f\U MARBLE MADNESS ECO DRILLER BUGGY BOY 

LUUfV — WINTER OLYMPIAD GOLDRUNNER INT. SOCCER BACKLASH 

CLUB SPFCIA1 1- VIXEN BARBARIAN HACKER II HELLBENT 

STARGOOSE QUADRALIEN HELLFIRE ATTACK WIZBALL 

AS A MEMBER YOU MAY PURCHASE ANY OF THE ABOVE TITLES + HUNDREDS MORE FOR JUST C7.95 
PHONE US TODAY FOR DETAILS ON HOW TO JOIN 



HOW TO ORDER: 

Cheques or PO's made payable to the relevant 
companies. Access/Visa orders welcome 



Telephone: 
Southampton - 0703 232777 
London -01 -597 8851 
Midlands -0926 312 155 



Software Club Users Line - 0703 232 777 
Software Hotline -01-597 8851 
B2000 Hotline -0703 232777 
Export Hotline -01-597 8851 



October 19H9 AMIGA tt)\1Pt TING 65 



3 1 / 



II 



ALL OUR DISCS ARE FULLY 
GUARANTEED AND 100% 
ERROR FREE 



5 1 / 



II 



ALL OUR DISCS ARE FULLY 
GUARANTEED AND 100% 
ERROR FREE 



3.5" DISCS AND BOXES y 

25 Discs with 40 capacity box £21 .99 

45 Discs with 80 capacity box £36.99 

75 Discs with 80 capacity box £52.99 

3.5" DSDD CERTIFIED DISCS 

75 p Each )^&\ 

100 £63. 99 

150 W...f.93.99 

200 £117.99 

500 £244.99 

1000 Please Ring 

3.5" DISC BOXES 

10 capacity 89p 

20 capacity zSm^Z \ -B9 

40 capacity j».£4.99 

100 capacity ....^....£6.99 



5.25" DISCS AND BOXES 

25 Discs with 50 capacity box £ 1 1 .99 

50 Discs with 100 capacity box. ..£17.99 
100 Discs with 1 00 capacity box £28.99 
200 Discs with 200 capacity box £52.99 

5.25" DSDD CERTIFIED DISCS 

24p Each 

250 £62.99 

500 £104.99 

1000 £194.99 

5.25" DISC BOXES 

10 capacity 89p 

50 capacity £4.99 

100 capacity £6.99 




3.5" High Density Discs M 3.5" Verbatim Datalife 
£1.49 each | | Discs £9.99 (Box of 10) 



SOFTWARE 

Upto 45% off recommended retail prices of Amiga, Atari ST 
and IBM Software 



♦ 



HARDWARE 

Amiga A500 £349.99 

A500 + 1084S £599.99 

1010 Disk Drive £94.99 

1084S £249.99 

Atari Hardware - Please ring for best prices 



A501 ..-*qp £129.99 

A590 XT.. £369.99 

Vortex Hard Disk Drive £529.99 



We also stock a vast range of games and various other program 
for ST, Amiga, Atari XE and VCS 2600. Also Joysticks, Cables 
Computers, Dust Covers, Books etc. 




No payment wi 



ed GUARANTEED! ha 



■EDUCATION! 



READERS' letters to Amiga 
Computing often bemoan the 
lack of good educational software, 
indeed the lack of any educational 
software. There is an exception, a 
program which really turns the 
Amiga into a teaching tool. 

Pun School 2 comes in three 
different versions aimed at three age 
groups - under 6. 6 to 8-year-olds, 
and 8 and over. Each consists of eight 
programs which aim to teach through 
play. 

I was given this software to review 
because I have two children, 
Alexander aged four-and-a-half and 
Karen aged 10. They both enjoy 
playing games on the computer - 
Silkworm is my son's current 
favourite and Infocom adventures 
seem to be the things my daughter 
plays the most. But did they learn 
anything from Fun School 2? 

FUN School 2 can easily be 
played by several children at the 
same time using one computer and 
could be used in a classroom. Groups 
could be given one program to solve 
between them and then they could all 
come together to solve the last 
problem. 

My son quite enjoyed Spell a Word. 
He now knows how to type simple 
words like cat, hat and bat. All I need 
to do now is teach him how to write 
the words down on paper — he can 
type much faster and more accurately 
than he can write. Colour Train and 
Kind the Mole were two other games 
he liked to play. They were teaching 
him something. He recognises more 
colours and understands that four is 
smaller than five, so both of these 
programs worked. 

It is more difficult to assess what 
my 10-year-old daughter learned. 
Unicorn kept her busy for a while, 
but after she had completed the game 
once she never looked at it again. She 
didn't seem to like Build a Bridge. 
This is really only a simple jigsaw 
and she has jigsaws already. The 
word games Passage of the Guardians 



Under 6 



YOUNGER children will enjoy 
games like Teddy Count, which 
teaches simple numbers. Up to nine 
teddies walk across the screen and the 
child has to count how many there 
are then type in the answer. 

Find The Mole is another numbers 
game. The idea is to guess under 
which molehill the mole is hiding. 
There are five molehills with hill 
number five the biggest and hill one 
the smallest. If the child makes a 
wrong guess the computer responds 
with either bigger or smaller. The 
idea is to teach the fact that five is 
bigger than four. 

Spell a Word shows the child one 
of ten pictures of an everyday object 
and the child has to type the name. 
Simple words like car. bat. door and 
so on are used which should be 
familiar to most pre-school children. 

Pick a Letter displays the whole 
alphabet and shows a word at the 
bottom of the screen. The child has to 
pick up the letters of the word and 
place each letter in turn in the answer 
space at the bottom of the screen. 
Parents can make their own word lists 
if they wish, entering family names, 
favourite toys, Swiss bank account 
number and die like. 



-mm 



Message in the molehills 

Write a Letter lets a child 
experiment. Children can press any 
keys they like and see them appear on 
screen in large type. This program 
teaches the general layout of the 
keyboard. Parents or teachers can 
type words for children to copy or 
simply let the child experiment. The 
final masterpiece can be printed out 
and stuck on the fridge with a magnet 
(not supplied). 

Colour Train teaches colour 
recognition. The child has to stop the 
train at the correct coloured station. 
At the start there are only three 
stations but these increase to six as 
the child progresses. 

Teddy Bear Picnic is a maze game 
which teaches both coordination and 
logical thinking. The aim is to move 
the teddy bear, using the mouse or 
arrow keys, through different mazes 
and to the picnic. The games have 
four levels of difficulty, which can be 
set by the parent or teacher. 



Commodore may be marching on the schools 
to sell them Amigas, but there is not much 
scope for home tutoring. One package sticks 
its head over the educational parapet Alex 
Aird dons the mantle of professional parent 





Oclnhrr IHHU .\MIC \ < <">»': \- r. • 



■ EDUCATION! 



For six to eights I 

EXPERIENCE shows that as we 
get older things get more 
complicated. For the six to eight year 
olds the format is the same. This time 
the cursor is a frog which leaps about 
as the child moves the mouse. The 
train reappears as Number Train, but 
as a result of ASLEF action is a little 
more difficult. 

The coloured train still has to be 
stopped at the correct coloured 
station, but as passengers get on and 
off the child is presented with a 
simple sum such as 4+2=? and the 
correct answer has to be entered. 

Another number game is Maths 
Maze. The frog has to be guided 
along stepping stones. When it meets 
a robot guardian the child has to 
answer a simple mathematical 



and Mystery Machine worked better 
and it seems that she learned 
something from them. We had 
problems with Logic Doors, a colour 
maze game, where you have to pick 
up coloured keys. She said: "I think 
that the game could get quite boring. 
I don't really understand it". My 
failure as a teacher perhaps? 

But Karen quite enjoyed Souvenirs, 
liking the idea of exchanging pounds 
into foreign currency and then buying 
presents. She now knows more about 
the countries of Europe than betore. 

Fun School 2 will teach children. 
They are not programs that you give 
to the child and then leave them to 
get on with it, the parents need to sit 
in and guide them through the 
problems. But as John Ridge pointed 
out in his article [Amiga Computing, 
July 1989) any program that can get a 
parent and child together for the 
child's education, and keep them 
there for some time, has got to be 
good. 

The programs can be considered as 
an aid to education rather than an 
end in themselves. For example, a 
four-year-old will learn a few new 
words from Fun School 2 but it is up 
to the parent to keep the process 
going with pencil and paper. 

Database Educational Software has 
plans for a Fun School 3. It has 
proved that it is possible to write 
tutorial software which is both a 
commercial success and worth using. 
Perhaps they have learnt the greatest 
lesson. Good software sells. 




Facts with u frog 



question. There are four levels of 
difficulty and some problems may 
need a pencil and paper to work out. 

Caterpillar is a version of Hangman. 
Every time a correct letter is guessed 
the caterpillar moves closer to the 
apple, finally eating it when the word 
is correctly guessed. 

Why you should want to promote 
the destruction of crops is beyond me. 
Perhaps the apple has been sprayed 



Getting bigger J 

OLDER children, eight and over, 
have games which are more 
challenging and the whole program 
has a single theme. On completion of 
a single program a keyword is given. 
These keywords need to be written 
down so that the last puzzle, Escape, 
can be completed. 

The packing game reappears as 
build a bridge. Hmm, civil engineer 
perhaps. Shapes must be picked up, 
rotated if necessary, then fitted into 
the correct place. For the older 
children there are more shapes and 
most need to be rotated. 

If you don't want your child to 
grow up to be a newspaper editor 
avoid the two word games Mystery 
Machine and Passage of Guardians, 




Buying Euro presents 



with an insecticide. 

Packing is a game where different 
shaped objects have to be placed into 
a box. Three levels of difficulty 
include more complicated shapes and 
include rotating the shape to fit into 
place. Ideal if you want your kid to 
get a job stacking shelves in Tescos. 

Shopping is a game which aims to 
teach reading and comprehension. 
Perhaps you have aspirations beyond 
working the checkout. The child is 
presented with a shopping list and a 
picture of a row of shops. Guide the 
frog to each shop in turn to buy the 
items on the list. 

Should dog food be bought from 
the grocers or the pet shop? The 
question of why the frog wants dog 
food, how it will open the tin and 
how it will feed the dog without itself 
becoming the hors d'oevres is not 
addressed. 



an anagram game. Guardians block 
the path and the child has to correctly 
solve an anagram to pass on to the 
next guardian. 

Children can go on a tour of 
Western Europe in Souvenirs. When 
the child gets to a country there is an 
option to buy presents. The prices are 
given in local currency so the child 
has to convert sterling to marks, 
francs or whatever and decide which 
present he or she can afford to buy. 
Later on destinations are chosen by 
picking a flag. It is necessary to know 
the flags of Europe to play the game 
at this level. 

Code Boxes is a game which 
introduces children to binary 
numbers. It is necessary to convert 
from binary to decimal numbers in 
order to solve the puzzle. This can be 
used as an introduction to different 
numbering systems in the hope that 
in the hope that your child 
will go on to write 
Starglider 47. 

Other games, such as 
Unicorn, involve solving 
logic or arithmetic puzzles 
which are presented in an 
interesting way. This is 
based on the old fox, corn 
and chicken problem. 
When all the puzzles have 
been solved and the 
keywords collected the last 
game, Escape can be 
played. 




68 AMIGA COMPVTISG October 1989 






AMIGA SOFTWARE 

African Raiders £13 50 

Balance of Power 1990 £16.50 



Batile Chess 

Bio Challenge 

Circus Attractions 

Falcon F16 
Falcon Mission Disk 



............................. 



£16 50 

£16 50 

£1350 

.£19 50 
£1350 



AMIGA 



AMIGA 500 £359.99 
Inc Modulator, Workbench 13. Mouse. Manuals + Leads 

AMIGA SPECIAL GIFT PACK All for only £399.99 

Am-ga 500 inc. Modulator. Workbench 1 .3 and Manuals. 10 games and Photon Paint or 8 
games. 24 PD titles + Joystick. Either of above plus 80 cap disk box. 10 x 31/2" disks, 

mouse mat; dust cover 

AMIGA 500 « DELUXE PAINT 2 + DELUXE PRINT £399.99 
AMIGA 1 MEG £489.99 
Inc Modulator. Workbench 1.3, Mouse, Manuals + A501 RAM Expansion 

AMIGA 500 + 1084S Med Res Colour Monitor £589.99 

AMIGA 500 + MUSIC X £549.99 

AMIGA ART + ANIMATION PACK £549.99 
Amiga 500 + 1/2 meg expansion + Deluxe Paint III 

AMIGA B2000 £1499.00 

Inc. B2000, XT Bridgeboard, A2090 20 mb Hard Drive 4 1084S Monitor 
A501 1/2 MEG RAM EXPANSION £129.99 



Fed ol Free Traders £20 99 

Forgotten Worlds £13 50 

Grand Monster Slam £16 50 

Gretzky Hockey £16 50 

Hawkeye £13 50 

Kick Off £13 50 

Kult m £16 50 

Lords of the Rising Sun ., £ 19 50 

Mayday Squad £13 50 

Melinium 2.2 „ £16 50 

Microprose Soccer £16.50 

Personal Nightmare £20 99 

Populous £17 50 

Powerdrome £ 1 7 50 

Robocop .' £16 50 

RVF Honda £17 50 

Skweek £13 50 

Sorcerer Lord £16 50 

Spherical £16 50 

Targhan ,..£16 50 

Tech ™ ...£16 50 

TV Sports Football „ £19 50 

Weird Dreams £16.50 

3D Pool £16.50 

PRINTERS 

STAR LC10 mono inc. Cable £189 99 

STAR LC10 colour inc Cable £229 99 

CITIZEN 120/D inc. Cable £139.99 

EPSON LX800 £189 99 

STAR LC24/10 inc. Cable £324 99 



MUSIC & SOUND 

Aegis Sonix V.2 £44.95 

Aegis Audtomasier II £59.95 

A MAS £77.95 

Future Sound £74.95 

Perfect Sound „ £74.95 

Pro Sound Designer Gold ~ £74.99 

DR T's KCS „ £159 95 

EKtersoH Midi Interface £24 95 

Date! Midi Interface - £34 95 

Dynamic Drums £46 99 

Dynamic Studio „ £59 99 

Studo Magic £59.99 

Ad' um £36 95 

Deluxemusic £59.95 

Music X (Out Now) £199 99 

Dr T 5 Midt Recording Studio £52 95 

A501 RAM Upgrade £129.99 

Workbench 1.3 Enhancer £13.50 

Disk Dnve Cleaner £4.95 

Mouse Mat (Soft) £4 50 

A500Dust Cover £6.50 

Amiga to Scart Lead £9 95 

Quickshot II Joystick £8.50 

50x31/2- Disk Labels £1.50 



ART & ANIMATION 

Lights. Camera. Action £47 95 

Zooirope C79.95 

Deluxe Paint ll/Deluxe Print Combo C59 99 

Deluxe Paint HI ~ £67.99 

DtQivew GoW E129 99 

Aegis Videoscape 3D E109.9B 

Comic S©1 l&r .+ ■ .99 

Movie Setter £59 99 

Mmigen (Genlock) £10*99 

Deluxe Pnoio Lab £59 99 

Deluxe Video £59 99 

Photon Paint II £79.99 

Video Effects 3D £109 99 

Video Wipe Master £59 99 

Aegis Animator £79.99 

Aegis Animagic £62 99 

Aegis Video Tider £84 99 

Comic Setter Clip An Di sks £ 1 9 95 

Fantavision — £36 99 

Icon Paint . — ,....£13 95 



MONITORS 

Commodore 1084S £259.99 

Phdips 8833 £229.99 



80 Capacity Disk Box £6 50 

Monitor Covers From £6.95 

A500 Power Supply £62.50 

Modulator £24.99 

B/W Handy Scanner £209.99 

Philips AV7300 Tuner lor monitors ..£69.99 
Modems from £89 99 



DRIVES 

Cumana 1 Meg 3.5" with on/off £94 99 

NEC 1 Meg 3.5" £69 99 

Vortex 40Mb £499 99 

Amdrive 30Mb „ £389.99 

Amdrive 50Mb £489 99 

A590 20Mb (with optional ram upgrade) ... £389.99 



All prices include VAT. Please send Cheques/P.O. Made payable to: 

ITIRSBILE M CQQflPUnniNQ 
DEPT AC, CROMER HOUSE, 
CAXTON WAY, STEVENAGE, 
HERTS. SG1 2DF 
★ CREDIT CARD HOTLINE: 0438 361738 * 
FAX: 0438 740 794 

If you do send cash please send it Registered. 
All Goods are sent First Class/Registered. Please add £3.00 for outside U.K. 
Large Orders ie. Amigas, ST, Monitors etc. are always sent by courier. 
Please add £6.00, H you require Next Day Courier Delivery on other items. 

AH prices are correct at ime of going lo Press, and are sublet* lo change wsnoui d"o' notice. 




TOP QUALITY 
31/2" DS/DD 

GUARANTEED 
BULK DISKS 



KM 



10. ~£7.95 

25 — ^ — £17.50 

50 ^NEW PRICES^ C33 50 



PRICES INCLUDE LABELS 

Add £5.50 (or 80 capacity disk box when ordering 
disks or £4.50 when ordering 50 or more disks 



Rupert Goodwins looks 
over a big box of DTP 
software which only 
lacks big box prices 



Solution 



i 




CHOICE 




70 AMIGA COMPITtNG October J WW 



■DESKTOP PUBLISHING! 





Very much in 
the load and go 
spirit. Kind 
Words 

encourages you 
to start typing 
the moment it 
is run 



The PageSetter 
screen has a 
selection of icons 
which, at first 
glance, make no 
Sense. You need to 
read the manual 



— ~T 



"N-UMOHKH-K BOOK 

thut rflMirt In tn? * «" M k V 

fiiitir Hiitorian Rob*r t CarUtll "THE 

roam sew* mxnwe-iie history of the 

DLLTP COASTER" 

a 759 ftgn and i* f«Wi *itn ph*loi, 
Jats »d all oth" valuabl» fads (of 
iiprfsiinfl ill yw frindr H» pn" 1 

74 ^UlTt^haraicI Ml. 95. Both t P I P. 
il cbtap but It it an nctllint book. Nor? 
.(-iH froi uUrrti ovftImI or tritf lo- 
Htmi* PRESS LTD P.O. BOX 97. 321 
EJUS! WAD. VESTAL MEM YORK 13858. 



mmlnx a 

•f Iht M 
of dalt. 

ttiilit 
An dm IU 
annual i 
avari, tl 
can coit 
tnal if 
dftdrvss ( 
and pott 
«ot t« 
of 1 01 hi 

all A.C. 
Mailt! 



PARALLEL evolution happens 
when separate species evolve 
into similar lifeforms. There are lots 
of small, furry monkeys in South 
America that look uncannily like 
small, furry marsupials in Australia. It 
seems to be happening with the 
computer software industry and the 
hook publishing scene as well. 

In old-fashioned publishing there is 
a breed called the packagers. These 
• mall, furry animals take an idea and 
find writers, artists and designers to 
produce a finished package. Now The 
Disc Company has followed a similar 
path and combined word processor, 
page layout and art discs from 
separate companies to produce one 
package - Publisher's Choice - which 
provides a route into desktop 
publishing for the Amiga owner. 

That The Disc Company is well 
named becomes obvious when the 
envelope is opened - seven discs fall 
out. Even backing up is an expensive 
game in DTP. On these discs reside 
KindWords 2.0, PageSetter 1.2, 
LaserScript, ArtPack and HeadLine 
FontPack. Why Software Publishers 
have to InterNally CapitaLise all their 
ProgRam names is BeYond me. 

KindWords 2.0 is a development of 
KindWords 1, reviewed in Amiga 
Computing September 1988. It's a full 
Wysiwyg word processor, with 
100,000 word spelling checker. 40,000 
word thesaurus and some advanced 
printing features. Very much in the 
load and go spirit it encourages you 
to start typing the moment the 
program runs. 

PERHAPS its most noticeable 
missed feature is the ability to 
work with more tfian one document 
at once, although those with 1 meg 
machines will be able to have more 
than one copy of the program 
running. 

It is included in the package as a 
text editor for the page layout 
facilities, but it has certain DTP-like 
(unctions itself. For example, it can 
merge IFF images into the document, 
*nd lets you stretch or shrink them to 
fit. It can't make text flow around 
graphics, and since it has no 
provision for more than one column 

.i page the graphics aren't suited to 
anything more than a letterhead or 
occasional illustration. But then, 
PageSetter's there for anything more 
Adventurous. 

Kindwords is exceptionally easy to 



use. It follows the standards found in 
the Macintosh world in the way that 
text is selected by clicking the mouse 
at the beginning of a block and 
dragged to the end. This block 
changes colour. 

Changes to typeface, font or style 
only apply to the current selection. 
Alternatively, single words can be 
selected by double-clicking with the 
pointer anywhere inside them; triple- 
clicking selects the entire sentence. 
Justification and centering are taken 
care of by a visible ruler — click on 
the little picture of centred text and 
the selected block centres. 

Automatic hyphenation tries to 
make the lines of the text appear nicer 
by bunging a hyphen in between 
syllables of words that would 
otherwise move to the next line and 
leave an ugly gap. There's more to 
hyphenation than that, but the full 
rules for deciding whether or not to 
hyphenate are complex (bears only do 
it during the winter) and not suited to 
a program such as this, so there's an 
option for manual hyphenation. 

The spelling checker and thesaurus 
come with British dictionaries, thank 
goodness. KindWords is available in 
nine language variants, an 
international approach which puts 
many software houses to shame. It all 



works on a single drive 512k Amiga, 
but positively purrs on the 1 meg, two 
drive system on which the program 
was tested. 

With a megabyte or more of 
memory, the program can keep 
dictionaries in ram instead of on 
floppy, which speeds up the spelling 
check tenfold. The Uhcsaurus makes a 
stab at telling you what the meaning 
of the word is; it isn't to be relied on. 

KindWords is easy to use. It hasn't 
got the bells and whistles of 
WordPerfect, such as macros or 
columns, and it hasn't got the speed 
of Protext. But there will be few 
people who stick with it as a good 
text entry machine for DTP, and it has 
things like a simple mail merge which 
make it a good domestic word 
processor. 

Pagesetter is the other major 
component in Publisher's Choice. It 
lets you move text and graphics 
around a set of pages until it looks 
right, and then prints them out. 
Starting with a blank work area, you 
create a page, draw a set of boxes and 
then fill the boxes with text or 
graphics. 

You need to read the manual before 
starting, as the screen has a selection 



October 1989 AMIGA (X).\tPm\t. T\ 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT 





J VERYTHING you need to know about making a better impression - written or visual - is on 
display under one roof at the International Desktop and Professional Publishing Show and its 
new partner. Presentations '89. If you're an expert this is where you'll find all the latest hardware 
and software. If you're just starting out you'll find all the help you need to make the right 
purchasing decisions first time round. And it's all happening at the exciting new London Arena 
in the heart of London's Docklands. 



I 




P0C1LMOS UBH MIWIW| 



At DTP 89 you'll find 



All the major hardware, software and service suppliers 
A two-day conference on The Changing Face of Desktop Publishing 
Daily seminars on the practicalities of desktop publishing - what to look for 
and how to decide what's best for you 
The Pira desktop publishing clinic 
Help and advice from DTP user groups 



DTP 



/ 



LONDON ARE] 
OCTOBER 4-6.1 




urn 



H 



At PRESENTATIONS 89 you'll find 



• The latest graphics and presentation systems 

• Audio-visual and data projection hardware 

• Slide production and reprographic services 
Daily seminars on improving communications skills, do-it-yourself 
presentations, and state-of-the-art techniques 

The full range of everyday presentation tools, from flip charts to marker pens 




r 



Complete this coupon or phone the ticket hotline on 
0203 470075 to obtain your pre-regist ration tickets 
and reserve your FREE copy of the 1990 Oesktop Pub- 
lishing and Presentations Yearbook {worth £20). 

Please send me: Advance registration (s) tor DTP 

'89 and Presentations '89 
n Information on conference and 

seminar programmes 
□ Entry details for the 1989 Desk 
top Publishing Awards 



DATABASE EXHIBITIONS 



1 



Name 

Position 

Company - 

Address 



tMiH.((Mt«(t*. 



M»ltl|tltltt(IIIMt 



Postcode 

Tel „..„.,..„,^-.^.-.« » 



Send to: The International Desktop Publishing Show, 
Data House, Curriers Close, Tile Hill. Coventry CV4 8QQ. 



THE ACTION 
OFFICE 

See DTP and 
presentations 
in action in a 
working officii 
environment 



■DESKTOP PUBLISHING! 



of icons which, at first glance, make 
no sense. The command menu along 
the top of the screen is more intuitive. 
Project contains file load, save and 
quit options and Department gives 
access to text and graphics editors as 
well as the print command. Art Board 
sets the size of grid on which the 
page will be created and whether you 
want to work in inches or picas. Page 
controls the creation and deletion of 
pages; Box sets options for the kind of 
box you want, 

CLEVER stuff lies along the right- 
hand edge of the screen. 
Gadgets choose the page number - a 
document can be up to 99 pages long, 
if you've got the memory and the 
patience. You can turn the grid on to 
precisely set the position of boxes and 
off to examine the final work without 
that unfashionable maths book finish. 

Once a box has been placed, it's the 
work of a moment to reposition, 
resize and crop the contents until it 
looks right. Boxes can be linked, so a 
lot of text will automatically flow 
from one to another in columns, 
across pages and in and out of 
unywhere you choose. What it can't 
do is flow around a graphic, unless 
you link boxes before and after the 
box with the picture in it 
Typographical tricks, where text 
wanders around an oval or bifurcates 
across a triangle, are out. 

The text and graphics editors are 
simple but well-suited to their role in 
life. The text editor allows block 
moves, search and replace, and the 
insertion by hand of font formatting 
effects (/b for bold, and so on). It can 
read many different kinds of text file, 
KindWords, WordPerfect and 
Scribble! among them. More than 
that, go back to KindWords for heavy 
duty word mangling. 

The graphics editor moves blocks 
of picture around, draws lines, resizes 
things, fills areas, all in glorious 
monochrome. Given that 99 per cent 
of DTP is black and white, this is 
good. Things go faster in two colours. 

The graphics editor makes it easy to 
tidy up slightly messy imported 
graphics. Again, if you want 
Michelangelo mode, get out of 
PageSetter and into your art program. 

You can choose how closely you 
want to work with the page by 



clicking on the magnifying glass icon 
which selects various sizes. The 
largest lets you examine the details of 
the text or graphics on the page; the 
smallest reduces the page to about 
half-screen size so you can move 
entire boxes off and on to the 
surrounding board. Temporarily 
homeless chunks can be tacked on to 
a different page later. 

In a close-up view, the area of page 
displayed is selected by moving a 
white box around a black rectangle. 
There are no scroll bars to move 
around the page in a more restricted 
manner, and this makes initial 
attempts to find a particular area 
rather clumsy. 

The coup de grace can be 
administered to any box by dragging 
it across to a rather disgusting 
trashcan in one corner. The pointer 
changes to a tombstone in a morbid 
mixed metaphor. 

PageSetter comes with 14 fonts of 
varying utility. Alternatively, using 
one of the four fonts supplied with 
the LaserScript disc gives PostScript- 
compatible output. 

LASERSCRIPT is a translation 
program that takes a PageSetter 
file arid turns it into a file that can be 
printed on any PostScript device. 
These include shockingly expensive 
laser printers and typesetters, but 
means you can run off test documents 
on your cheap, nasty, dot matrix 
printer before taking a disc down to a 
typesetting bureau and getting 
commercial quality pages printed. 

Finding someone with a suitable 
typesetting machine and an Amiga is 
often a problem. The Text Formatting 
Company (01-806 1944) provides such 
a service. 

LaserScript also lets you rotate your 
document, surround it by a shadow 
border, resize it and so on. 

The final goody in the Publisher's 
Choice package is the collection of 
clip art — a few hundred mixed 
images in IFF format, little pictures to 
distribute around your documents. 
All human life is there, spacemen, 
dragons, Santa Claus, computers, 
dogs, lighthouses and the Starship 
Enterprise. It's unevenly drawn, and 
some of the pictures look decidedly 
amateurish. 

All the images are in the manual, as 
are the fonts. The manual is a large, 
ring-bound item divided into an 
overall tutorial section, bits on the 



individual packages with lots of hints 
and tips, appendices and an index. 
It's well written and easy to use, 
although the illustrations were printed 
on something desperately in need of a 
new ribbon. 

PRINTING uses WorkBench 1.3 . 
printer drivers. The whole set of 
discs comes with enough WorkBench 
files to let PageSetter. KindWords and 
LaserScript boot up in minimal ram 
usage configurations, as well as 
various hard disc installation 
programs. Everything in the package 
follows the multi-tasking rules, so if 
you've got enough memory you can 
run the entire set together. 

The advent of the bundled package 
is an interesting milestone. It gives 
users the chance to pick up a number 
of programs for quite a low price, and 
solves many of the "will my word 
processor work wiUS that DTP 
program?" questions that anyone 
trying to build up their own selection 
must answer. On the debit side, if you 
don't like the word processor you 
won't be able to sell it because there 
isn't a separate manual. 

Publisher's Choice is a good 
package for those who want to get 
into DTP but who haven't yet bought 
a word processor. While it might limit 
the experimentally minded after a few 
months of serious playing, it has the 
potential to generate documents of 
typeset quality and will be more than 
adequate for 80 per cent of DTP 
applications. It's also easier to dive 
into than many more specialised 
programs. 



RKPORT CARD 



Publisher's Choice 
The Disc Company 
£95 



EASE OF USE 1 1 1 I I 1 1 I H I I I 1 M 

Simple, if inconsistent user interfaces. 
Multi-tasking makes DTP very' much 



easier. 



SPEED. 



PageSetter is impressively quick, but 
KindWords can be quite slow. 



ii i ii i i iii i m 



VALUE 

Amazing value, two major programs 
which will meet your DTP needs. 



OVERALL 



A good blend of programs which, 
within certain limits, provides 
everything you need in a package. 



October 1989 AMIGA COMPUTING T» 



AMIGA 500 PACK 1 

Amiga 500(1.3 ROM) 
Mouse * P.S.U. 
Modulator . Leads 

Workbench 1.3 
Bafi' 1 Z * Ext as 
Th« Very Flrat Tutorial 
Introducsion to the Amiga 
500 WBl 3 Supplement 
Arruga Basic 
T3S8.99 



AMIGA 500 PACK 2 

Pack 1 plus v>b following: 
I Kan Warriors - Insanity Fight 
Mercenary 1 * Art of Chess 
TenorpUs * Thuodercats 
Barbarian ♦ Buggy Boy 
Amegas ♦ Wi/bali 
Photon Pain! 
B37M8 



Sonm c HiHE Starter Paci 

Mouse Mat 
Mouse Bracket 
10 SONY MF2DD0n#s 
80 Capacity Disk Storage Bo» 
3.5" Head Cleanef 
A500 Dust Cover 
ONLY C25- 

conput* Orf ImM m i nans' 



ALL PRICES INCLUDE 


V.A.T. AND DELIVERY 




(U.K. ONLY) 






Courier/Overseas 






rates on request 





See our Advertise- 
ment in Next Month's 
Amiga Computing tor 
Peripherals'Accesso- 
nes Books 



A2000 SYSTEM 1 

Amiga 2000 
A1084S Monitor 
A2090 20Mb Hard Drive 
PHONE - While stocks lastl 



A2000 SYSTEM 2 

Amiga 2000 
A1 084S Monitor 
A2068 PC- XT Bndgeboanl 
A20O2 20Mb MS-DOS 
Hard Drive 
PHONE • While slocks lastl 



Amiga 500 . A1084S 
A590 20MD Hard Dm* 
A5D1 Ram 

EipansiorVQocIt 

A520 Modulator 



ES9B H 
D5B99 

£13199 
£23 99 



A? 000 POA 
A2000.A1084S POA. 
A2024 HiRes Mono Monitor POA 
A?010lrrtem*IDrtve P OA 

A2090 20MB Hart Dnw POA 
A2093 20MB A/boot Dnve P 0 A 
A2095 40MB A/boo! Drive. POA 
A2092 20Mb MS-DOS Dnve POA 
A2088 PC-XT BmtOCBoanJ - PO A 
A2288PC-ATflndoe&oa/a POA 
A20SB Ram Expansion POA 

A262O6B02O«8881 POA 

A2621 Unix Card POA 

A2300 Genlock POA 

A2350 Prut Video Adaptor POA 
A2032 PAL Comp Vid Card POA 



Word Procesjimc 



Excellence _. 

Kind Words 2 

Protext 

Protext filer 

Pretext Otlce 
Pro Wnte 2 

Transtnpt 

Word Perfect 



El 77 40 

D635 

£68 50 

£1840 

...£24 95 

£7060 

_...£32 50 

£177 40 



Databases 



MPS1230 Pnnlei £132 99 

A1084S Colour Monitor. £242 99 
A:90'-M Mono Uantoi CM M 
A1010 Disk Dnve £88 99 

At 352 Mouse ._ .... £32 99 



LA»8WCEsX0»PllER»Vi:TC 



Acquisition 1 3 - 


El 9? 


80 


K-DaU . 


£34 


80 


MfciaAche filer 


£63 


00 


MKrofiche Filer Plus 


£124 


00 


Superon Personal r 


£41 


35 


SuoerMM Personal 2 « 


£68 


SO 


Superoase Professional 


£166 


95 


Sprfadsheets 


K-Spnad? 


£41 


35 


Man pun A 500 


£39 


.70 


Wa>ipian Plus ,™. 

Supfplan „._ 


£133 
£68 


55 
50 



API 68000 £99 95 

A-Reu £3630 

Aztec C Developer £126 00 

A/tec C Prolessional £91 60 

Artec Cscd £56 35 

Benchmark Modula 2 £132 50 
Benchmark C bonnes £7060 

OevpacZ £4135 

GfA Basctt £4755 

Hisott Basic £55 40 

K-Seka Assembler £34 80 

Lattice CV5 £178 00 



UTILITIES' 


Amikil ...t.A 


£2865 


fcshas Caligratonts 


£47 75 


BAD 


£32 50 


BBC Emulator ,.„... 

Butcher 2 

Climate.. 


£40 00 


£28 65 
£32 50 


Cygnus Ed Prolessional 


£7060 


Dak 2 Dok 


E40.0G 


Dos 2 Dos 

r>5kmasler 


L4U.UU 

EH N 


Enhancer (WB1.3) 


£1385 


Face II 


£24 85 


Fancy 3D Fonts 




GomfV3 0 _ 


£28 65 


GraD Bit . 


£24 65 


Interchange ._„__ 


ft *ft ftft 

L4Q 0"J 


Irterchange 0&iects 1 — 


.£17 25 


I'chanoe Mod V3CVFinF 


£17 25 


Change Mod V3LVTurBo 


.£17 25 


jnv Video Fonls 

vwuu i u"u ......... 

Kara Fonts _______ 

K- Gadget 


£32 50 
£55 35 
£2165 


K-Roget 

born Fonts . 

Maiishot Plus — 
Newsletter Fonts 


£34 80 
£47.75 
£34 80 
£24 85 


Power weidows V2S 


£55 35 


Pro Video Font Set 1 


£55 35 


Pro VKteo Font Set ? 


£5535 


Project D 


E32 50 


Quarterback 


£47.75 


Studio Fonts 

Superback 


£24 85 

. £42 00 


Text Ed Plus 


£5535 


The Callig raphe r _ 

Transformer ..„__._ 

X-Ccpy V2 „ 


£70 60 
£26 35 
£1640 



Desk Top Pubushihq 



Oty Desk 

Pagesetter 
Professional Page 
Publishers ChoW 
Shakespeare 



£83 20 

£63 00 

...£193 50 

£71 65 

... £119.70 



CAD/GRAPHICS/AmiilAT10H 



An i magic ~ — — 

Animate 3D 

•Aniriatw7irnages/Art 
Architectural Design 

C-Ught 

CortK setter 

Come Setter Oip Art 

Deluxe Paint 111 

Deluxe PhcfloW) 

Deluxe Pnnt II 
Deluxe Productions 

Deluxe Video 

Design 30 - 

DiglPamt 3 

Draw 2000 

Fantavition 

Forms in Ftght 2 

Future Design 
Human Design _„.._ 

Icon Paint — 

Impact —■■>. 

Intenor Design 

IntroCAO 

Lights Camera Action 1 
Microbot Design , 
Modeler 3D 

Movie Seller _ 

Page Rippe' * F/X 

Photon Pamt 2 

PI X mate 



£63 00 

£97.35 

£5500 

£22 30 

._. £40.00 

£40.00 

£17.25 

. £60 50 

£5315 

£38 55 

_.£104 35 
E53.15 

£6300 
,.£55.35 
....£173.00 

£31.95 

£93.50 
.....£22 30 
...-D2 30 
£18 20 

CSS 35 
. £2230 

£47 75 

£51 55 

£2230 

£63.00 

_£55 35 

£93 50 

.£61 00 

£40 00 



Please ring tor prices/aval lability on any hardware/softwere/peripherals not listed. (Full price list on request) 



Please make Oiequevposial orders payable to SOFTMACHINE. All prices are inclusive o* VAT. 
ALL PRICES CORRECT AT TIME OF GOING TO PRESS AU ftema subject to availability. 

SOFTMACHINE 

36 Guernsey Road, Sunderland SR4 9RR. Telephone: 091 385 7928 



riiiilBi urinl fti-lui 

professional uraw 

ri. - i f .... . L'l . 

fro vioeo nus — 

bcuipi JU 

acuipi 4u ~ — — ~— 


nofl 
. 1 1 *) 


t J 
Cfl 

JU 


ret 

IDO 

f355 


pfj 

M 


scuipi iu Juruoi 

The Diredor 


c in! 

.... •>! 1*1 


60 


£47 


75 


The Director's Toolkit 


...... £28 


B6 


Turbo Sever — 

TV Show 


..£108 
£70 


75 
6v 


TV Ttsd 

Video Etlecls 30 


.....£70 
. .£124 


B0 
00 


.: !--'.. ■■ M. 


£55 


35 


video Tiller 


£86 


20 


Video Wipe Master 


£55 


35 


Vtaeoscape 3D 


£124 


00 


X-CAD Desifl no ' 


£89 


75 


X-CAD Prolessional 


£352 


BO 


Zoetrope 


£96 


35 



'stale Sculpt orVidcoscape 



Music 



A Drum £32.50 

AurJiomasler2 £63 00 

Deluxe Music £53.15 

DrTsKCS £154 50 

Dynamic Drums £47 75 

Dynamc Studio £11635 

instant Music £2025 

MusicX , El 84 15 

Opusl £8000 

Pro Midi Studio £11135 

Somx £5155 

Sound Oasis £63 00 

Studio Magic £69 85 

Synthia £74 70 

Track 24 £75 00 

Ultimate Sound Tracker £29 50 



Communications 



A Talk III £7060 

BBS PC £93 50 

RubyComm £54 65 

RuDyComm Plus _ £77.50 



AcCDUMTt 



Arena Accounts £88 25 

Home Accounts ._ — £2185 

Small Business Accounts £62 35 



Ladbroke Computing 



"ITie Country's Leading 16 Bit Specialist 




33 Ormskirk Rand. Preston. PR! 2QP. 
Open Man. - Sur. 9:30 nm to 5:00 pm 
welcome* 



Dealer enquiries 



YOU CAN'! AFFORD TO SHOP FI.SF.WHRRF LOOK AT THESE PRICES (INC .VAT 



Tth iTiinfw«> Hat r"" "*■*• •■ft--" 1 

fHth mini V" to P"»"« » 
VAT ASPDELhf ^ mi onfcai cm 



» Art .m f~. - "OT?^ 1 «^ ,^^;J r ^, ,r^^rtoT..^^ T*««~bW*««»-. WYSIWYG. ALL MCBMCUfl 



A m/ga Upgrade Boards 



S/J A RAM Extension Bturds 

■ A tSBS wi'hor wilhcxil aJcnOvA-kvk. ' ffutp >-*•/(> intoAXWsM 
(potobkringt ' Smitrh provided to twitch RAM in / out Banrry 
tmcked calaxhrkkxl M*ia* limoAimlc oo MM off Aavxing low 

price. 



without cbek. 
with clock, 
without chek 
with clock 



(impopoiatai) 
( unpoftuhtcx/) 
(populated) 
(populated) 



£17.99 
£29.99 
£107.99 
£11999 



Repair Centre 



tnuinttfr* van r«p«r ail h«rd— rc induing AmigM in minimum 
ptMiw r*l«. W« s*n urmnge pukup frx pfOaSBl B«mC]f >o 
vm raurn 18.00 



Oi» IrjincU 
lime -I iompd.-t 
luxIvo tor ill V' Vxl •bi 



Software 



At Least 20% discount off aU_ 16 bit , 
software 

Minimum Discount 
EC. RRP_ Our Price 

£1999 £IS99 
£24.99 £1999 
£2999 £2399 
Maximum Discount 

£1999 £6.99 
£24.99 £9.99 
Phone for best prices. SAE for calahgbC 



Fr.-e daft**!) lM«inti»nd UK onl>> on ordm over £40 
tor order, under 140 mid £2.50 



New i,ow Price Quality Disks 



All our u»k* -re lop Munlil* Som. Hhtttdk or Kio proUwta, not ihex< 
import*. All duki HUl unionditiorwl tifelimc guarantee. 



QuanUty 3^" WS 
10 £8-99 
»0*box £9.99 
100 £79.99 
100+ box £82.99 
Sony Branded 3S" D/S Boxed x 10 £10.99 
Sony Branded 3.5" D/S Boxed x 100 £99 



5.25" D/S Q/D 96 TPI 
£650 
£750 
£60 
£65 



Peripherals 



Irnkvr ball ait* ai mou*e 124. '*9 
DOOM Auto tire pvstitk 19.90 
Anlbudu IWHM obU 15.99 



PHO 5000 kAslkk 1S.90 
Mnlutator far UK with Tv 124.9"* 
.V1ou«:Jio\»Utk exten>ipn 15 99 



New Low Price Printers 



Star LC 10 £169.99 
Sur LC 10 Colour 1219.99 
Stir LC 2*10 1299.99 
Epwn LO 5*0 £319.99 
Cti/en 120 D 1139.99 
Phone lor other*. All printer* tonx- vompiete «Hh Parallel tat 




Amiga drives 



Vorte% 40MB<ST U Amigid 
Supra 30 MB Unapt 
Third Coaal 65 MB Umigal 
1 Mg 'i'^ i" ditabte twitih 
and through port 
Triangle f» olhera 



1499.99 
£674 99 
£629.99 

£79.99 
poooc 




Monitors 



Phillip. 8333 Colour Monitor. 1249.99 
Mullt»*rx votour Monitor*. IPhonc 
Phillip. 15" Remote. Start. Tv *ilh 
40 tuner prewh. 1229.99 
Monitor*, dedovt 110 it bought with Computer prK>n» 
tor fv'i. All monitor* iome with ■■art \o AggM afc 




1 



MOT, £369.99 
Irxiuov* Amiga AMU lomputcT. Icnttar pavk ot len game* and Neaa*. 
PACK 2 m M7.99 

tKluUe. Amiga A5UO vwmputcr. 913 K RAM Exterwon . Tcn*l-r 



Great Value 

Amiga Packs 



PACK 2 with Clock ^479 99 

PACK 3 "PACK I * CMS833 Col. Moo. f59999 

PACK4-PACK3 + CM8S33ColMoa. £707.99 

PACK 4 with clock £719.99 



CO'7'72:>2031t585 Fax 5*3 1CT71 




AW* 



JOIN THE CLUB! 

If you're looking for the best prices, best games, best offers and best service, 
then join Special Reserve. Or join Official Secrets if you're looking for more. 



£5.00 



Official Secrets £2200 



Club Privileges 



All club members benefit from: 



• Special die's: at price* you might not believe! ..... 

• Bt-montNy Buyers Guide eacli with detai» of *0 games, buiW«»g w a *afc*a reierence. 

■ Membership cart wRh privtege number, and folder lor the Buyer's Gudes. 

• 24-hour despatch o( stock Items. Mow lines In alcck. 

■ Eat* game sent individually by 1st class post. Moat writ ■ through your Wer-box 

- 7-day tales hotlne. open until 9pm weekdays. 10 10 5.M Saturday*. " to 5 Sundays. 

• Wrlten notfkcatlon ol unexpected delays. Order query Ine RMM weekdays. 

• New titles may be ordered in advance and wil be despatched upon pupaceflon. 

• Instant refunds available on request lor delayed Mies. 

• No commrtmenl. no obligation io buy anything and no Trirwrmm purchase 

Best games at best prices 



AJI the best games, carefully selected and available to members on«y *i trury 
extraordinary prices. We're miles cheaper than ekewhere. so cneap thai we anl 
advertise our individual prices. Below are a selection oi offer* tor two games al about 
the same price you would normally pay lor one. Vou ca"^yiM'0< games at the 
same time as (oming - or join now and select indtvrtuaty "om our caUOgue ol over 
l COO products. There « no obligation Io buy anything. 



Confidential 32-page A4 bimonthly glossy magazine 

Confidential Is written lor people who take their lun seriously. I you are Into Adventure. 
Strategy. FRPs, MUGs. PBMs, D&Ds, or H you would simply like to see more Irom 
behnd the scenes then Conlldential is essential reading. Regular features rckirJe 
Personnel File. Dead Letters. The Man In Black. Feature Ancles. Brain Teasers, Diary. 
Mews. Competitions, and The Boss Upstairs. Club pa/ttdpalion is welcomed. 

GnOme RanCjer Level 9~s award-winning 3- part adventure 

Starring Ingrtd Boftomlow. *Go out and buy Gnorn* Rang* pronto" said Atari ST User. 
H you already dk) please tick the box lor a Surprise Alternative. 

Help'Ljne Manned weekdays and Sundays 



GaiTieS Pick a pair ol Amiga games 



Below * a small selection Irom our catalogue. The -SOP* * our 
lor both games Including UK postage and packing. 

30 poOL „_„_.__,. VIXfM 



combined price 
RRP SRP 



PAC MANIA 

STRIKE FOOCt MARfli£6 

EllMtNATOR 

BKYCMASE - 

STRIKE f ORCE I 



Elite 

f16 combat pilot 

F16FA1.COM 

FEDERATION OF FREE TRAMRB 

GUNSHIP _ 

ORAM) PHI' CIRCUIT 

MONDA RVF 750 - 

M1BRI9 , — »- 

KICK Off m. ■ 

LOMBARD RAC RALLY 

MCROPROSE SOCCER 

MILLENNIUM 2.2 

NIGEL MANSE LL-8 GRAND PRIX 

RJCK OANGEFtOOS MfENOER OF THE f 



PURPLE SATURN OA* 
TEENAGE OUEEN . 

TETRB 

HOSTAGES 

NIGEL MANSElLS GRAND PRIX 
INCREDIBLE S«r*N-iNGSPHtRI 

CAPTAIN BLOOD 

KARTING GRAND PRIX 

HOSTAGES 



tlHI" t 



SWORD OF SO DAN .... 

TEENAGE QUEEN 

THE N€W ZEALAND 5TORY 

THUNDERBIROS 

TRIAD (COMPILATION) 

TV SPORTS FOOTBALL (U S A). 

WATERLOO 

WAVNE GRE7ZKY HOCKEV .... 
XENON a MEGA BLAST 



.. HOSTAGES 

.VIXEN 

.PACLAMO 

KING OF CHICAGO 



HEU/iRE ATTACK 

.THREE STOOGES 
DEFENDER OF THE CROWN 
HOSTAGES 

NIGEL MANSEirS GRAND PRJX 



aafls 

■ M 
u ft 
*9M 
H 98 
HM 

1, M 
«* 

U 90 

44 m 

44 90 

4BM 

49 44 
49 94 
44 98 

M 

at n 

S4 94 
44 94 

MOB 
44 96 
<9 9fl 

49 94 

30 94 
44 94 
M M 
49 96 
N M 
S494 
S4 94 
49 90 



.1800 
19.48 
37 96 
|rjJJ 
?i 4fl 

.25.48 
X 98 
21 48 
24 96 
2.1 96 
16 96 
21 48 
1948 
24 48 
24 96 

10 48 
24 96 
24 96 

23 ae 

21 98 
26 48 
2J48 

21 48 

22 48 

11 96 
21 98 

n m 

1448 
2f 4H 

24 48 

25 48 
20 48 



Advice and hints to help you solve most games. 

Speddl ReSerVe Included in the membership fee 
All the features and benefits of Special Reserve merrtoersMp . 

Myth A mini -ad venture by Magnetic Scrolls 

Magnet c Scrolls, authors ol The Pawn, The Gutfd of Thieves, Jinxtar, Corruption 

and Rant have now written *#ytfi exclusively lor members crl Official Secrets. 

Ama2lngly enough. I Is included In the price ol membership. Set In Ancient Greece, 
you play the part ol a young god striving to prove himself worthy of Irmiortailty. You'l 
meel the Ferryman, have a chance to cheat Death, and do battle against the nine- 
headed Hydra guarding ihe gates to the Underworld. Myth includes the stateol-the-art 
Magnetc Scrolls parser and those incredible graphics. For most computers - diskonry. 
Onry lo mombers ol Official Secrets - Free - Out Now. 



SONY 3.5" DS/DD DISK with label 89p each 

AMIGA A500 + STOP GAMES A TV MODULATOR 349.99 

(INCLUOES HV8RIS DEFNOR OF THE CROWN. STAROLIDER. BARBARIAN AND NCEL MAN5ELLS G P| 

STAR NL10 PRINTER F4T, 1Z0CPS, mnlq. t2 month wabrantv 179.99 
AMIGA 512K RAM UPGRADE genuine item v/nw clock 129.99 
CUM ANA 3.5' DISK DRIVE W« 
MONITOR STAND fits over amiga plastic coated steel frame 1 9.99 
TWO PLAYER LEAD for populous or falcon (null mooemi 8.99 
DUNGEON MASTER SOLUTION BOOK 2.50 
PUBLISHERS CHOICE DESK TOP PUBLISHING 66.49 
F16 FALCON MISSION DISK 12.99 POPULOUS DATA DISK 7.99 
PHOTON PAINT 10.99 KIND WORDS 2 W/P 31.49 

DELUXE PAINT III 51.49 P ROT EXT W/P 64.99 

SHOOT 'EM-UP CONSTRUCTION KtT HOUSE HAT 



Adventures 



ARTHUR f/rrfOCOS* i«ep 

BAROS TAl£ < **• 

BARDS TALE 1 

BATTLFTCCH '6 49 

BtOOOWVCH 'S« 

CKRONO QUEST 17 97 

DEMVU1 tSM 

OUNQN MASTER II MEO) rS« 
DUNGN MASTER EDITOR 7.49 
GAIOREOCWSOOMA/N »'.*» 
GOLD RUSH i lf.4» 
OOtD€HP*TH .7.4* 
IMO/VOS BACH 1249 
JEWELS Of DARKNESS .949 

JOURNEY '»« 

KINO Of CHICAGO 9*9 

KINGS QUEST I 949 

KINGS QUEST 3 949 

KINGS QUESTS 949 

KfhSTAL 12.49 

KULT 1249 

LANCELOT 1249 

LEISURE SUIT LARRY 2 1949 
UANHUNTER NEW YORK 12 49 

UOfTTWlLLE UANOR 11.49 

NORO AND BERT 949 

SHADOVfOATE 949 

SHOOUN .19.49 

SILICON DREAUS 949 

SILPHEED '999 

SPACE QUEST I 1949 

SPACE QUEST 2 1999 

TALESPIN ADV CREATOR 17.49 
TBJE t UACJf 1249 

1/1 H MA fV 1947 

WAR IN UDOLE EARTH 1499 
ZAKkleKRAKEN 19 49 

ZORK2ERO 2049 

AvaAafM only BwWi 
Subted Id ibr* 




PRINTER LEAD 

KONIX NAVIGATOR AUTOFIRE JOYSTICK 



IflAO 
BBS 
11 » 



MOUSE U*T 

NL10 PRINTER RIBBON 
COMPETTTION PRO CLEAR JOYSTICK 13 



Myth was rated at 90% by Keith Campbell of Commodore User. 
H« aald "Don't be put ott by tt being a mlnl-«d venture.... " 



To order please wnte. or complote the coupon, or lelephone us on 0279 600204. Ptease rale lhal there a a surcharpe ol 50p per game tor orders placed by leh^pnfc 



Order FOrm Non-members P.ease add member^ fee Speaal Reserve membership £5 UK. IS EEC or £7 World 



Name. 



Address. 



Official Secrets membership £22 UK. £25 EEC or £30 Wodd 
■Hi Gnome Ranger and Myth | | or with Surprise Alternative and Myth [ j 



AMIGACOMP 



Post Code. 



Computer 



Phone No.. 



•5.25r3.5T3.0TTAPE 



Game 
Game 



} 



Payable to: Special Reserve or Official Secrets 
P.O. Box 847, Harlow, CM21 9PH 

Special Reserve and Official Secret! are trading namee ol tnter-Medlates Ltd. 
Reg. Oflce: 2 South Block. The Mailings. SawO'iOfloworth. Herts CM2! 9PG. 
RegiBiered in England Number 2054713. VAT reg. no. 42* 8S32 51 



TOTAL £ 



Credit card expiry date 

'CHEQUE/* POSTAL O RDE R/" ACCESS/* VIS A 
(Including Connect. Mastercard and Eurocard) 



Overseas orders must be paid by credit card 
Prices indude UK Postage and Packing 
EEC orders please add 70p per game 
World orders please add Ct .50 per game 



October I9HU AM Hi A CO\Wt Tl\(i 75 




vortex system 2000 hard disks 



Now available • Vortex 'System 2000' hard disks, offering ve 
high-capacity storage, suitable for use with the Amiga 500 and 
1000. The units are of a high specification, with a formatted capacity 
over 42Mb and an average access time of 45Ms. The system consists 
a hard disk base unit, cables and an Amiga Interface module, with utili 
software including an autoboot facility and a hard disk backup utility 



System 2000 40Mb Hard Disk package E529.0C 




All prices include VAT delivery & cable 



All prices include VATIdehvery 



AMIGA ACCESSORIES 

A501 RAM/dock expansion lor Amiga 500 ~ - £1 19.00 

MiniGEN Genlock adapter £95.00 

Contriver Hi-Res Mouse, indudes Moose Mat & Pocket £22.95 

ITT CP3228 16.5" FST TV/Monitor inc. rem/control & cable .... £229.00 

Philips CM8833 colour monitor suitable lor Amiga 500 £229.00 

Philips CM8852 monitor as above, but higher resolution £259.00 

Philips TV Tuner AV7300, use with any composite monitors .... £74.95 

Word Perfect ~ - £149.95 

Superbase Personal ~ £69.00 

Superbase Professional £179.00 

Super-Plan £74.95 

A500 Dusl Cover £4.95 




A-MAX 
MACINTOSH 
EMULATOR 



An AMIGA COMPUTING Gotd Medal winner - 
allows Amiga users to emulate a Mac Plus In 
orOer to run Apple Mac and Mac Plus software. 
Mac disks can be read rjkectty In when an 
external Mac Drive is connected to the cartridge 
hardware. Runs at least as last as a Mac Plus! 
Software compatible with the A -Max Includes 
MacPaint. MacOraw (V1&2). MacWrlte. 
Pagemaker (V1&2) plus all versions of System. 
A-Max without 2 x Mac 128K ROMs ... CI 29.00 
A-Max WITH 2 x Mac 128K ROMs E249.00 



Wc use and recommend Star pnnlci* 
since they otic an unbeatable com 
bmatton ot features p"ni quahlf 
reliability anil value Make ihr *en*i 
blf decision - get H nqhl with a Sla» 
printer al our special all in pnct'i 



Hugely successful 9 pin printer, the 
Star LC10 provides 4 NLQ fonts (with 
96 print combinations) at 36cps and , 

144cps draft. Has a large 4K buffer Colour version also available. 

and IBM/parallel interface buiilt in. 
indudes a comprehensive front panel 
operation and features paper parking, 
allowinq single sheets lo be used . 

without removing tractor paper. black ribbons tree of charge. 



Only £179.00 



Only £229.00 

Prices include 2 extra 



Star LC24-10 multifont 24pln printer, amazing new low price £230.00 

Star SF-10DJ / DK cut sheet leader for LC-10 / LC24-10 £64.95 

Star NB24-10 24 pin printer 216/7? cps. 

including cut sheet feeder and 2 extra ribbons £499.00 

Stan NX-15 good value wide carriage 9pin printer £329.00 

Panasonic KXP1081 reliable 9pin 10" printer 120/24 cps £169. 

Panasonic KXP1180 super new 9pln multifont 11.7* carriage _ £199. 

Panasonic KXP1 124 good quality new multifont 24pln £319. OC 

Panasonic KXP-37 cut sheet feeder for KXP1 180 ~ £9S.0fl 

Panasonic KXP-36 cut sheet feeder lor KXP1124 £109.00 

Epson LX400 (was LX800) 9pin 10" 180/25cps - £179.00 

Epson LQ5S0 24pln 10" 150/5Ocps £319.0C 

Epson EPX-200 cut sheet feeder lor LX800 / LQ500 £74.95 

NEC P2200 budget 24 oin 168/S6cps E319.0C 

Citizen 120D budget 9pin 10" 120cps « £139.00 

Citizen HOP-45 bargain value wide carriage 24pln „ £399.00 

Mannas man n-Tally MT-B1 9 pin 130/24cps „. - £149.00 



3.5" EXTERNAL DRIVES 

using Citizen drive mechanisms 




• Suits Amiga 500 or Amiga 1000 

• Top quality Citizen drive mechanism 

• On / Off switch on rear of drive 

• Throughport connector 

• One megabyte unformatted capacity 

• Slimline design 

• Very quiet 

• Long cable for location either 
side of computer 

• Full 12 months guarantee 



Ultra low price! 



inc.VAT and 
delivery 



Now available - Our New 
Low-cost 5.25" External 
Floppy Disk Drives 


We are now supplying the new, good quality 
RF542C 5.25" floppy drive compatible with 
the Amiga. Quiet in operation, the unit is 
colour matched to the Amiga, and has a 
throughport connector. The drive Is capable 
of a number of configurations including 
40780 track switching and 360/720K format, 
giving full 'Transformer' compatibility. 


Only 

£114.95 

including VAT 
& delivery 



OMEGA 
projects 

MIDI 
INTERFACE 



Good value, low cost compact MIDI 
Interface, completely compatible with 
all music software currently available 
that uses MIDI capabilities. Connects 
to the serial port, and features 
diagnostic display indicators to 
enable the user to locate the source 
of a fault. Supplied with 30" serial 
connector lead full user Instructions. 

ONLY £29.95 



DOUBLE TAKE! 
PYE 

TV/MONITOR 

(MODEL 1185) 



High quafity rnedfcjrn resolution 
colour TV/monrtOf now available 
to suR the Amiga. Features 
tete»<t full intra -rod remote 
control. SCART connector, 
VkMo/Audo Input and head- 
phone output connectors. M 
tuner presets, external aortal 
connector end a loop aerial. 
BHBBIM *t!H connection cable 



ONLY 

£269.00 

price Include* 
VAT, delivery 
and cable 



3.5" Disks 



10 Bulk packed DS/DD 3.5" disks 

with labels, fully guaranteed £11.95 

25 bulk disks as above £27.95 

10 disks as above with plastic case £13.95 

25 disks as above, with 40 capacity 

lockable storage unit £34.95 

Kodak DS/DD 3.5 s disks, top quality 
storage media. Box ol 10 .... £17.95 



Evesham Micros] 


All prices Include VAT and delivery. Express Courier delivery £5.00 extra. 


fw"| Send cheque, Postal Order 
^ or ACCESS/VISA card details 


Evesham Micros Ltd 

63 BRIDGE STREET 

EVESHAM 
WORCS WR11 4SF 
<Z> 0386-765500 

fax 0386-765354 
telex 333294 


WSfl Phone us with your 
■■U ACCESS or VISA 
nan card details on : 
t-l'ff 0386-765500 


Govt, educ & PLC orders welconw 
Sam* day despatch wtwoever possible 
All goods subject to availability, L&O.E. 
Open lo callers * days, 93$£3* 


At*o ffl. 1762 PtnboiT Rd, CoUcrio-t. BlnWnafcaiB 830 3BH TH: 021 458 45*4 



2*?°°!* for a,*. 



8s c ontaj ns 



±"''0* Bridge- 1111 ■ 

* ,lna > °°°ck oVZ b g % k J n ° 





children can really have fun while learning. 
School 2, designed by a team of educaiion- 
», is available for three age groups: Under- 
-8 year olds and Over-8s. Each pack comes 
eight colourful and exciting programs, a 
irful button badge and detailed instructions 
g educational help. 

computer itself monitors the child's 
I'ess. The skill level - initially set by parents 
automatically adjusted to suit the child's 

children can enjoy using their parents' 
ter while they learn at their own pace. 

>/e for: 





HNNNNlNr 



im. Commodore 64, 
rad CPC, BBC Micro/Electron 
r3pe) £12.95 {disc). 

Atari ST. Amiga, PC €19.95 



DATABASE 

EDUCATIONAL 

SOFTWARE 



Format 


UrxJer-65 


6-8 years 


0ver-8s 


Tape 


Disc 


Tape 


Disc : 




Disc 


Spectrum 


9094 


9095 


9096 


9097 


9098 


9099 


Commodore 64 


9064 


9065 


9066 


9067 


9068 


9069 


Amstrad CPC 


6179 


6180 


6181 


6182 


6183 


61B4 


BBC Micro/Electron 


2239 




2242 




2245 




BBC B+/Master 40T 




2240 




2243 




2249 


BBC B-f/Master 80T 




2241 




2244 




2250 


Atari ST 




9192 




9193 




9194 


Amiga 




9842 




9843 




9844 


PC 5.25- 




5764 




5765 




5766 


PC3.5- 




5767 




5768 




5769 



Please supply Fun School 2 for the code 
number(s) circled 

□ Cheque payable to Database Software 

□ Please debit my Access/Visa card no. 

Mill I l I ' I Mill | U | | 



Signed 



Expiry date 



Add £2 per program Europe & Eire/£5 Overseas 



Nam*;. 



Address. 



Ple3se circle the code number of the format you require 

Send to: Database Direct, FREEPOST, 
Ellesmere Port, South Wirral L65 3EB. 
Access/Visa orders: Tel: 051-357 2961 



Postcode. 



ACIO 



I POWERPLAY PACK 



1 



Hf 



POWERPLAY PACK 1 



ALL OUR AMIGA A500 PACKS CONTAIN MACHINES 
WITH THE FOLLOWING STANDARD FEATURES 



• 512K Ram 

• 1 Meg Disk Drive 

• 4096 Colours 

• Multi Tasking 

• Mouse 



• Kickstart 1 3 

• Two Operation Manuals 

• Workbench J .3 System Disk 

• All appropriate Connecting Cables 



If you thought Powerplay Pack 
was good value just look all 
our Powerplay Pack 2! 




GRAPHICS HARDWARE 



DIGIVIEW GOLD 

Digress static trtouf mages « IFF 
formal oi al fssofahom from 2 to 
4096 colon tip to 640 i 400 
pi>tli{r«qumB & W a colour 
•mil B & W mute Mdn canwn 
to ituj.iiw m rnhMl 

qmy £139.95 



PANASONIC 
VIDEO CAMERA 

Hqh quabty hah moUion mono 
«dn carnon Idwri tor dgnung, 
npnkori with km mani powered 

iwir £249.95 



CAU FOR DfTttS AND PRICES 
Of IUIMJNAHD COPY SIANO 
FOfl VKQ CAMEHA OGmSWG 
Of STUiS EE PttCTOGRAPHS 
GRAPHICS ETC. 



SUPER 



Bond m oofccl mtwm rata* 
cottu twm grabbar him mtnvq 
«*)eo Captin saporb dnajort .«k« 
oaagei it • range of oaoWwni from 
■uodan) compoMi *dm eoutct 
such KiMMRMniiiti 
recorder or win camera m a 50th of 
a second IndudnlMDtkBswhT 
Am,, a*** or 
S*por« al Ansa 
■tduthng TOrtaa and Ovron 

only £549.00 



MINIGEN 

Add uneuw araohn to four own 
wlnasseY CormodBvwiAmaja'i 
RGB port and domasOx vidao 
oquipmool D mot a/aprm and 
avMoj pctunn 

MOVIE MAGIC AT ONLY.. 



POWERPLA 



Take our NEW Powerplay Pack 2 and add a 
Commodore MPS 1230 printer for that 
COMPLETE AMIGA HOME 
ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM 0 nlY 
7b wbiorvtt the MPS > 230 tor toother 
printer m out rwnoe. jtnipht deduct 
t 139 95 end add the ptce of the 
alternative chose" 



0 nlY-_ 

£729 



POWERPLAY PACK 4 



£113.85 



Take our NEW PowerplaY Pack 3 
replace the games software with an 
extensive business package , . 
THE WORKS . Integrated w p. mail 
merge, spreadsheet, pro database, 
multicolour graphics etc., etc. 

To substitute the MPS 1230 to another 
printer m our range, srmpty deduct £139. 9S 
and add the pice of the alternative chosen 



WE 

£729 



PACK 2 contains the super 
"Powerplay Pack V plus a Philips CM 8833 
Stereo High Resolution Colour Monitor 
(HIGHER SPEC, than 1084S) See those 
games - Hear those games . . . 
WITH ADDED REALITY! 

(N.B Powtrptty Pock 2 doesn't oidudaj i TV Modulated,' 



ACCESSORIES 
TAILORED AMIGA £4ffl 
DUST COVERS 0NLY *-**^*J| 

(Also available for most monifafV printers tic) 



JOYSTICKS . . . 
ZIPSTICK SUPERPR0 

hotauiuiiai qnakty wtth M " Parted foot'. 
aMofn 12 raor* wanwm 

MICR0BLASTER 



niw tow n; 

£15.951 



COMMODORE . . . 
AS01 RAM PACK 

Ganun CBM 51 2k EXTRA RAM with ml me 
dock dot* NOT iwafeM *mp wuramy 

CBM 3.5" DS/DO 
BLANK DISKS 

8a of M blank dab 

BULK PACKED DISKS 

Tan 35" OS/DO De* 

OR with Bray case *«o«i- 



£12.95 
£139.95 
£14.951 

C-tt far oajaata. 
rfucoarrW 



£9.95 
£10.95 



HARWOOD'S - THE NAME YOU CAN TRUST 



ORDERING MADE EASY 

■M ORDER BV PHONE-Simply call our 24hr Hotline 
Sag using your Access/Visa or Lombard Charge Card. 

ORDER BY POST-Makecheques bankeis-building 
society (hafts or postal orders payable lo GORDON 
HARWOGD COMPUTERS |N B Personal or 
business cheques require 7 days clearance from 
date of receipt before despatch) 

PAV AT VOUR BANK- It you wish to pay by Credit 
Giro Transfer at your own uank. phone lot tleta-ls 

f REE POSTAL DELIVERY goods m UK Mainland 
(5-7 day del-vnry) OR COURIER SERVICE - Add 
£5 per maiot 'tern neat working day delivery 
UK Mainlanc (Orders normally despatched on 
Oayot receipt ol payment or cheque clearance 



COMPARE OUR SERVICE 

After you've purchased from Ha woo as welt 
still be here to completely satisfy you should 
any problems arise. 

W 1 2 MONTH WARRANTY - It goods prove to be 
S faulty witnm 30 days o* purchase they wrll be 
A* 1 * replaced with A NEW UNIT For me (emarnder at 

the Guarantee Period all warranty repairs will be 

made FREE Of CHARGE! 
fe/ COLLECTION FACILITY -Any faulty computer or 
*K monrtor will be ccJIocted from your home FREE OF 

CHARGE within this Guarantee PenorJ" 
5*/ FULL TESTING PROCEOURE-AII computers are 
gQ, thoroughly tested poor to despatch. 



CREDIT TERMS 



Gordon Harwood Computers are licensed brokers 
and facilities to pay using our Etudget Account 
Scheme are offered on most items APR 35.2% 
1 2-36 month credit sale terms are available to most 
adults, simply phone or wnte and we will send written 
details along with an application form (Applications 
are required in advance.) 



Dedit terms with or without a deposit can 
be tailored to suit your needs. 





£399 



MEGABYTE A500 HARD DISK 

power tot your Amiga A500, connects directly through 
■hear expansion bus Urha-reeable. built- m power supply 
•wad to match your Amrga A500 

WASGA STORAGE 
AT ONLY 

Also available 50 mb version £475 

I Mates I yi replacement warranty FREE, optional 2 yr a.adabte 

COMMODORE A590 20Mb HARD 
DISK FOR AMIGA A500's 

Autuboot on Amiga 
11.3 Kickstart only) 
Sockets lor 2Mb RAM 
npansion 

• OMA 

VORTEX 40 MEGABYTE HARD DISK 

mm concept in drsk storage NEW LOW PRICF 1 

• Amiga A500/1000 
I others available) 

.RW000S SUPERSLIM 3.5" DRIVE 

TVoughport NEW LOW PRICfi 

OrVOH isolator switch £_ /4"-95 

-UMANA DISK DRIVES 

CAX 354 CAX 1000 

3 5" 2nd Dnvi 5.25" 2nd Dnvi 

£94.95 £129.95 



NEW 10W PRICE' 

£379 



£499 



'0 FREE BLANK DISKS 
(Worth £10.95) 



10 FREE BLANK DISKS 
(Worth £9.95) 



SAVE MONEY 
SAVE DATA! 




PRINTERS 

All printers in our range are dot matrii and include 
the following features . . . 
Standard Centronics parallel port lor direct connection 
to Amiga PC s, ST, Archimedes etc Tractor and friction 
paper feeds and FREE connector cables 

CITIZEN I20O Full 2 year warranty 

Very retabki low cost printer, mterchangaable iniBrtaaa 
available RS232 or Serial type for CBM 64 ate £1 « » 
COMMODORE MPS 1230 

Manufactured by Olivetti. buret in dual Centronics and 64 type 
serial interfaces Connects to 064/128^16/44 and 
Amrga etc CI 39 35 

STAR LC1D MONO 

Miftree font octant tram hrrnt panei ereHlerrl paper handling 
C54/128 version available. f 179.96 £tf«S 

STAR LC10 COLOUR 

Colour version at the pcouiai LC10. aiming the effect of full 
colour on screen dumps (requires colour printer driving 
software). C64/128 version avasabk. £209.95 £2JfrVS 

STAR IC 24 10 

24 Pin version of the popular LC series with exceptional letter 
print quaJrty NEW LOW PRICE' £249.95 

All cmi Slit pnnuti art full UK ipec aHicH ate tpecifnaUi manufocluiaj 
Dv Si* Japan lor lafe tn Iht UK only Plaaia be await IKal Euitipean Mr. 
Stai (ir*im a>B bt*iQ urinHxialt tmpenn) •ytiml tha withci d' Si* 
Mtcromci UK Thaw pnnfen *> cany a Sim U* wiiiiamr and will <w( 
teunuidnrhaitiihoutdlheTCMBiisa Thaw may ta-miHabMdua W 
maau tupoT! intiimoittWil, U« spn pimlm way tn TO»gnrwil In n«« 
IffeBM p«' UK Type mam plug which n mooMcd lo IN mini ci 




MONITORS 
PHILIPS CM 8833 STEREO 

(Higher '.pec than 1084S) 

Full U" High Resolution Stereo Colout Monitor 

9 Twin Speakers 

• High Contrast Tube 

• Scatt Euro-Connector fitted as standard 

9 Green screen switch for enhanced text modi 

• RGB/AI, TTL, composite video and stereo audio 
inputs 

• Can also be used as TV with tuner or VCR 

• Supplied with tilting stand 

• Compatible with most micros 

• With FREE lead lor computer ol youi choice 

• Only from Harwoods 
1 year replacement warranty 
for major faults 

COMMODORE 1084 

Full 14" High Resolution Colour Monitor 

• RGB/AI. TTL. composite video and audio inputs 

• Scart Euro- connector fitted as standard 

• Supplied with cables lor A500. CGA PC. 
C16-64-128 

• Can also be used as TV 
with tuner or VCR 



£209 



AWARD MAKER PLUS f39 95 

Creates cartrf icatu and awards in a varaty of 
styles, then prints out in black a colour, 
landscape or portrait. 

PROFESSIONAL PAGE VU C22S.K 
The irMnu* in ful colour Amiga OTP packages 



SOFTWARE 



PUBLISHERS CHOICE 

The package aware Khfvmrds V?'. Pagestflsr 

V l I Artists Choce 1 and 'The HeataW 

X CAD OESIONER £W.W 

Perfect start in computer- aided desqa 

WE SIOCK A VAST RANGE OF SOFTWARE TOO MUCH TO LIST HERE • AT COMPETITIVE PRICES 
FOR A WH01E RANGE OF COMPUTERS AND GAMES CONSOLES PHONE US NOWI'1 



AEGIS VIDEO TITllfl OM 
Use with Gentockx t.g Mrnigarn etc 
THE WORKS £78 N 

Integrated wp. maanwge, spreadsheet pra 
database, milktkv graprtcs etc. 
WORKBENCH 1.3 fl«« 
Lattst version of Amiga 0 S 



&24HR ORDER LINE -0773836781® 



VISIT OUR SHOWROOM 

Vase call to sac us where our full range of 
eVertised products AND MORE is on sale. We 
r*lf be only too pleased to demonstrate any item 
' hardware or software and a host of peripherals 
fi accessones. 

REMEMBER WE ARE NOT JUST 

ANOTHER MAIL ORDER COMPANY 
U prices are what YOU PAV. and there are 
© HIDDEN EXTRAS. VAT 6 Postage are included 
r*o are correct at ume of going to press. 

& 0£ Offers subject lo availability and are currently 
•JMftised prices. 




GORDOfl 
HARUJOOD 
NORWOOD 

HflRWQ 

G73ROON HAnWOODCOMPUTERS 
DEPT A C O 69-71 HIGH STREET 

ALFRETON DERBYS DE5 7DP 
Tel 0773 836781 Fax: 0773831040 





■ ■■■I 



■■■■■■■■■■■■ 



» ■ ■ 



Lombard 




F#Ve . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . GO! 



Your 300bhp Ford Group A Sierra Cosworth roars away from the 
starting line, skidding round hairpin bends, as you speed through 
unfamiliar, ever-changing terrain ...in a race where every fraction of a 
second counts/ 

Lombard RAC Rally recreates all the excitement of the world-famous 
rally - with the help of RAC drivers who guarantee Its authenticity. 

Complete the five stages - down winding tracks, through verdant 
forests and over precarious mountain ranges - with the additional 
hazards of night driving and fog. 

Repair damage and add new features to your car in the workshop, 
and earn money for spares by taking pan in a TV interview. 

This is the official simulation of a lifetime ... will your skills measure up 
to the challenge? 

• inside every box: A detailed 16-page booklet containing a 
history of the rally and technical specification of the Cosworth, 15 
maps to help you plot out your course, and a colourful sticker to 
commemorate your participation In the rally. 



'Totally addictive . a breath of fresh air' - Atari ST User, January '89 

'Thoroughly engrossing. . . highly recommended. . . the best controls I've 
encountered in any computer race game' - Computer and video 
Games, January '89 

'The definitive racing game. . . Overall 95%' - Computer Gamesweek, 
November 5-15, 1988 



An absolute must? - ST Action, January '89 



SOFT WA R F 



in jssoclsrKm m0) 




Please send me Lombard/RAC Rally for: 

□ Atari ST □ Amiga □ PC |5'/«"| 

I9IS7I (98291 . (57281 

□ I enclose a cheque for £24.95 
made payable to Mandarin Software 

□ Please debit my AccesWisa number: 



□ PC (3'/?") 

157291 



E*piry date 

/ 



I I I I II I I I II l l l M I I I 



Signed_ 

Name 

Address. 



.Postcode. 



Database Direct. FREEPOST. Ellesmere Port, South Wlrral, 165 3EB 
Tel: 051-357 2961. Postage: Add E2 Europe/Overseas £5 

AC10 




D 




TRADE - SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, LOCAL AUTHORITY, 1 MAN 



ALL 



15" 
3 5" 
35" 
IS- 
IS" 
3-5" 
15" 
3.5" 
3.5" 
T 
T 

5.25" 
5.25" 
5.25" 
5.25" 



ALL OUR DISKS ARE 
SONY OR KAO d£I 
CHEAP IMPORTS 



DISKS 
UNCERTIFIED 
DSDD135TPI GOOD 
DS DD 135 TPl SUPERB 
12 HOLDER SOLID PLASTIC WIT> 
BRANDED S3 DD 135 TPl TERRA 
BRANDED DS DD 135 TPl TERRA 
BRANDED DS DD 135 TPl SONY 
DS HIGH DENSITY 2.0 MEG 
BRANDED DS HIGH DENSITY 2.0 MEG SONY 
BRANDED MAXELL DISCS 
AMSOFT DISCS 

DS DD 48 TPI-PACKED IN 10'S & 25*3 



QUALITY 



10 TO PRICES 



BANDS - ALL ORDERS WELCOME 
LABELS, ENVELOPES & WRITE PROTECTS 



BRANDED DS DD 48 TPl 3M 
BRANDED DS HIGH DENSITY 1.6 MEG 3M 
PRE-FORMATTED DISKS 1-100 ADD 20p PER DISK AND PLEASE STATE 



QTY 10 


QTY 20 


OTY30 


QTY 50 


QTY 100 


£6.50 


£12.99 


£19.50 


E31.3U 




£6.99 


£13.70 


£20.40 


EJJ.bO 




£7.50 


£14.99 


POO Cft 




£69.99 


i ABOVE PER BOX 








£84.00 


CB 99 

Mit 9W 


£17.50 


£26.00 


£43,00 




£1B 00 


£27.00 


£44.00 


£86.00 


£10.50 


£20.90 


£31.50 


£50.00 


£98.00 


£18.99 


£37.50 


£58.00 


£95.00 


£175.00 


£26.00 


£51.00 


£75.00 


£122.50 


£244.00 


£23.99 


? 


? 


? 


? 


£26.99 


7 


? 


7 


? 


£3.00 


£5.90 


£8.70 


£14.00 


£28.00 


ABOVE PER BOX 








£65.00 


£6.99 


£13.50 


£20.00 


£33.00 


£9.99 


£19.50 


£27.90 


£45.00 


£93.00 



DISK STORAGE BOXES 

15" 12 HOLDER SOLID PLASTIC EXTRA STRONG 

15" 40 HOLDER LOCKABLE 2 KEYS & DIVIDERS 

3.5" 50 HOLDER LOCKABLE 2 KEYS ♦ DIVIDERS 

3 5" 80 HOLDER LOCKABLE 2 KEYS & DIVIDERS 

3.5" 100 HOLDER LOCKABLE 2 KEYS & DIVIDERS 

3.5" 150 HOLDER STACKABLE POSSO BOX 

5.25" 50 HOLDER LOCKABLE 2 KEYS & DIVIDERS 

5.25" 120 HOLDER LOCKABLE 2 KEYS ETC. 



OTY1 


QTY 2 


QTY3 


QTY 5 


£0.99 


£1.90 


£2.70 


£4.50 


£4.99 


£9.50 


£14.00 


£17.50 


£5.50 


£9.99 


£14.99 


£18.50 


£5.99 


£10.99 


£15.99 


£22.00 


£6.99 


£12.99 


£18.99 


£27.50 


£14.99 


£29.50 


£44.00 


£72.00 


£4.50 


£8.50 


£11.99 


£18.99 


£5.50 


£10.90 


£16.00 


£25.00 



3.5" DISC LABELS 
(4 COLOURS OR 
TRACTOR FEED) 
£1 tor 50 
PLEASE STATE 
TYPE REQUIRED 



THE ULTIMATE DISKS WITH STORAGE BOX OFFER - ALL DISKS AND BOXES AS ABOVE 

3 5" 40 HOLDER LOCKABLE DISK BOX WITH 

3 5" 40 HOLDER LOCKABLE DISK BOX WITH 

15" 40 HOLDER LOCKABLE DISK BOX WITH 

3.5" 80 HOLDER LOCKABLE DISK BOX WITH 

3.5" 80 HOLDER LOCKABLE DISK BOX WITH 

15" 100 HOLDER LOCKABLE DISK BOX WITH 

15" 150 HOLDER STACKABLE POSSO BOX WITH 

5.25" 120 HOLDER LOCKABLE DISK BOX WITH 



10 X 


3.5" DS DD DISKS 


£11.99 


20 X 


3.5" DS DO DISKS 


£19.50 


30 X 


3.5" DS DO DISKS 


£28.95 


10 X 


3.5" DS DD OISKS 


£13.00 


30 X 


3.5" DS DD DISKS 


£27.00 


10 X 


15" DS DD DISKS 


£14.00 


50 X 


3.5" DS DD DISKS 


£47.00 


50 X 


5.25" DS DD DISKS 


£16.50 




PLEASE NOTE: 
WE ALWAYS 
SEND OUR 
SUPERB DISKS 
IN THESE BOXES 



JOYSTICKS 1 

CHEETAH CHALLENGER £4.99 

QUICKSHOT 2 TURBO £7.90 

CHEETAH MACH 1 £8.50 

CHEEETAH STAR PROBE £11.99 

COMPETITION PRO 5000 £9.50 

TURBO JUNIOR £3.99 

TURBO SUPER £5.99 

CHEETAH 125* £5.99 

RAM DELTA £7.50 

SPEEDKING £9.99 

NAVIGATOR £10.99 



2 

£9.00 
£15.40 
£16.00 
£21.99 
£18.50 

£7.00 
£11.50 
£11.50 
£14.50 
£19.50 
£21.50 



QUICKJOY 2 TURBO THE 
ULTIMATE SPECIAL OFFER 
QTY 1 QTY2 
£6.99 £k c;:so 




GENIUS GM 6 PLUS MOUSE C34.00 



ATARI ST TWIN JOYSTICK EXTENSION 
MOUSE MAT 

MOUSE MAT 6MM TOP QUALITY ANTI-STATIC 

ATARI ST/AMIGA CENTRONICS PARALLEL PRINTER CABLE 2.0M 

IBM PARALLEL CENTRONICS PRINTER CABLE 2.0M 

3-5", 5.25" & 3" DISK CLEANING KITS & FLUID 

MOUSE HOUSE 

AMIGA AND ATARI ST DUST COVERS 

THINGI I -COPYHOLDER 

THINGI II - ADJUSTABLE COPY HOLDER 

COPY HOLDER - ADJUSTABLE MOVING ARM - SWIVEL 

ATARI ST/AMIGA 4 PLAYER JOYSTICK ADAPTOR 



£199 
£1.99 
£2.99 
£3.50 
£3.50 
£1.99 
£1.99 
£1.99 
£3.00 
£3.99 
£14.99 
£4.95 



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[V/T AKING discs is not a simple 
XV A process. Many steps are 
needed along the way, and in a disc 
manufacture plant the process may go 
something like this. First the magnetic 
iron oxide is produced. This forms 
the basis of the magnetic media. It is 
mixed with a binder to help it stick to 
a carrier film, and prevent the 
molecules from going astray under 
their magnetic influence on each 
other. 

Now the magnetic material has to 
be coated on to the carrier film, 
which has been electrically 
discharged, in a thin uniform layer. 

The film and coating are usually 
checked for defects - the first check 
out of many in the production run. 
What we have now is a a big roll of 
the magnetic media, about the size of 
the rolls of paper used in the printing 
industry. The next stage is to punch 
the discs out. The hubspring - the 
metal thing in the centre of a disc - 
has been punched out and pressed 
into shape and is glued on to the disc. 

Now the discs are put through the 
second test in a purpose-built drive 
that can handle sensitive naked discs. 
These machines usually have more 
than the normal number of read/write 
heads, maybe eight as opposed to two 
as in an Amiga, so the test can be fast 
and efficient. 

Meanwhile the plastic shell has 
been moulded, the protective metal 



Have you ever thought about how much 
work goes into those tiny discs? What do 
you have to look out for when you buy 
them and what do you do when things go 
wrong? Henning Sorenson tells the story 

Dance 
around 

the disc 



cover cut and bent, the simple spring 
to close the cover wound, and the 
fleece cut out. It sits quietly inside 
and is designed to catch dust, 
fingerprints, smoke particles and 
other nasties which have found their 
way on to the surface. 

Now it is time for these parts to be 
put together, but the product is not 
ready for distribution yet; the final 
test has yet to be passed. This takes 
place in another purpose-built tester 
which can change discs 
automatically, so no human 
interference is needed other than 
supplying the beast with a fresh stack 
of discs once in a while. 

Assuming the disc has survived all 
the stringent tests so far. the product 
is now ready for the consumer. Your 



first contact with the discs is in the 
shop, but which ones should you 
buy? Expensive discs are more 
reliable than inexpensive ones surely? 
A disc is a disc, they all look the 
same to me, so what's the difference? 
What does HD, DD, DS and TPI 
mean, and what is it to me? 

All these questions, and many more 
come easily to mind when you are 
looking round your local computer 
shop. Let's get the definitions out of 
the way once and for all. 

The discs the Amiga uses are the 
kind called 3.5 inch DS DD, which 
means Double Sided (as opposed to 
SS) Double Density (as opposed to 
SD). Double density may also be 
referred to as 135TPI which means 
135 Tracks Per Inch. Do not be 



82 AMIGA COMPUTING October I f)tl<l 



■AM IGADOSi 




tempted into saving a quid or iwu by 
buying the cheaper single sided or 
single density discs, you may have to 
pay dearly with many hours of lost 
work when the media gives in with a 
sigh. 

Having figured out which type of 
disc to buy, the next step is to decide 
which brand, and let me warn you 
it's a jungle out there, especially 
when you have an Amiga. The Amiga 
demands a lot more of the media than 
other types of computers like the ST 
or PC, which will happily use a disc 
reliably as lung as it is about the right 
size, slightly magnetic and slicks 
together throughout the process. 

This is because the nice people at 
Commodore-Amiga decided we 
deserved a bit of extra space, but it 
has proved to be misplaced affection, 
since the space has been paid for over 
and over again with failing media. 
Because of this, the use of proper 
high quality discs is more crucial to 
us Amigaoids than almost anyone 
else. 

I have used a lot of different brands 
of discs, ranging from SKC, through 
3M, Maxell, GoldStar and Nashua to 
BASF. All have performed differently, 
even though all manufacturers claim 
they are 100 per cent certified. I have 
also used a lot of no-name discs of 
dubious origin, with just as many 
different results as with their branded 
cousins* 

No-naine discs are dist-s which the 
big manufacturers throw out on the 
market very cheaply. These do not 



usually come with the lifetime 
guarantee, which is slightly irrelevant, 
since you'll probably be more 
anxious to get your invaluable data 
replaced than the media anyway. 

THE branded counterparts are 
primarily targeted at the 
business market, since reliability is 
crucial, and they like the security of 
the name. The difference between the 
unbranded and branded discs is 
purely in the testing because they are 
being made on the same factories of 
the same material. 

The branded discs have been tested 
tu make sure the product is reliable, 
and the unbranded is very often not, 
to increase profit margin. 

My own experience is that there is 



such a thing as a good cheap disc, but 
finding it is the tricky bit. You may 
also say that you get what you pay 
for, but in some cases what you pay 
is a lot, and what you get is a disc 
error. 

I have had poor experiences with 
3M discs, which to my mind is 
robbery in broad daylight, since they 
are horrendously expensive. If 
possible, SKC discs are the worst 1 
have ever used, and you would be 
well advised to stay clear of them. 

On the other, and more pleasant, 
hand I have had very positive 
experiences with Sony, TDK and 
BASF ones, and can wholehearted I v 
recommend them. GoldDisk and 
Nashua comes in somewhere in the 
middle, and you can certainly do 



(Mober 198'./ AMK.A ( ' 



■AMIGADOSi 



worse than buy these brands. When it 
comes to no-names, I have bought 
some that were very poor indeed, and 
some which have never failed me. 
The latter is, I am sorry to say, the 
exception rather than the rule. 

One helpful hint when you buy 
no-name discs: Look at them - is the 
assembly of high quality? Is there a 
serial number on the back? This very 
often indicates discs in the higher end 
of the no-name hierarchy. 

When you have found a good 
reliable no-name "brand", look 
closely at the disc. Notice the colour 
and structure of the plastic and the 
shape of the arrow on the front. 

Very often there are numbers 
moulded into the shell, holding the 
disc, upside down, cover away from 
you, the semicircle on the far left- 
hand side seems to be a favourite 
spot. 

These small but significant 
differences can help you find your 



way around the no-name market, and 
identify discs you have had 
experience with previously. 

The conclusion of ail this is ! Use 
branded high quality discs for your 
important work I recommend TDK, 
BASF or Sony, but other brands may 
work just as well. Try and locate a 
source of good reliable no-name 
discs, ask friends or try different 
types. 



USE these discs for stuff you can 
easily get other copies of, like 
PD software. This way you'll have a 
reasonably high degree of security 
while avoiding slimming your wallet 
to too great an extent. Remember, it is 
no shame to use no-name discs, 
actually most commercial software 
comes on them. I should know, I see 
a lot of it. 

When the grim reaper has come to 
collect one of your discs it is not too 
late to save it, or some of it anyway. 



You have DiskDoctor on the 
WorkBench disc. This has previously 
been the only source of disc healing 
available, and it is no understatement 
to say it isn't a great pleasure to use. 

DiskDoctor has been known to 
mess everything up and leave you 
worse off than when you started, so 
the sensible thing is to make a copy 
of the disc and use DiskDoctor on it 

Fortunately, there is a better 
program around, Dave Haynie's 
Public Domain DiskSalv, which was 
on the August Cover Disc. This 
program will not try to write anything 
to the damaged disc but rather try 
and pull as many of the files on it 
safely off on to another disc, your 
hard disc, ram disc or wherever you 
want it to go. It will even pull files 
from a damaged hard disc on to a 
series of floppies. 

This program has saved my life by 
helping me keep a deadline more 
than once, and I can recommend it as 
the best disc - and life - saver 
around. 

. i 





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H4 AMIGA COMPUTING Octobtr t989 




Disc bargains! 

Send for the full version of the great programs 

on the Amiga Computing cover disc - and SAVE £431 



Chariots of Wrath 




RRP £24.95 
Our Price 



£16.95 



Chariots of Wrath combines the best features of some of the 
greatest games ever to have been written, resulting in an 
action-packed mega adventure. 

Each phase of the game features impressively designed graphics, 
superb sound effects and highly addictive game play. 

As you traverse through the levels, amassing firepower and points, you'll find you just 
have to keep coming back to complete that next level. 



Home Accounts pjo* Day by Day 




RRP £54.90 
Our Price 



£34.90 



me Accounts has been designed to make full 
of the Amiga's features, giving you the 
dest range of home accounting facilities 
ilable at this price. 

The program lets you set budgets and control up to 13 separate 
accounts, with optional printouts of any data. Within seconds of 
loading your data disc you can check your budget or any account 
and even display or print the data in bar or pie charts. 




Day by Day replaces your manual system for diary 
business organiser, notepad, planner, reminder and so o 

It's suitable for both business and home applications, including 
numerous useful functions which serve every requirement. 

Among its many features are: 
• Calender/diarv/planner 
Categories such as bills, birthdays and 
letters 

Appointment sorting 
'Urgent' notice board 
'Overdue' notice for forthcoming events 

Both of these powerful programs are excellent value on their 
own, but if you buy this exclusive combination package we'l 
knock £20 off the combined retail price. 



Updating of regular appointments 
Comprehensive search facility 
Automatic reminders 
At-a-glance week and month summaries 
Print option 

Grouping of related messages 



Trained Assassin 



RRP £24.95 
Our Price 



£16.95 



This blockbuster combines the best 
features of some of the most popular 
games ever to have appeared on the 
Amiga. 

It features five action-packed levels 
with different varieties of scrolling 
and gameplay, with the fifth level guaranteed to raise 
your joystick's temperature by a few degrees (if not 
i your own). 

I "Trained Assassin is of a standard that could probably 
ft survive unaltered in a real arcade - few games could 
manage that". - Stewart Russel, Amiga Computing. 



Raider 




RRP £19.95 
Our Price 



£12.95 



Skill and determination 
are the qualities you'll 
i need in vast amounts if 
i you're going to fully 
ft master this game. 

ft Your mission consists of collecting pods by 
ft hovering above them and switching on 
ft your tractor beam, but all the time you 
ft have to take into account the effects of 
ft inertia and gravity, controlling your ship as 
ft smoothly as possible - to avoid colliding 
ft with the planet below. 

^^ft "Ine graphics are wonderfully drawn and 
ft smoothly scrolled in all directions. Every 
landscape is a joy to look at and explore 
delicate, addictive gameplay". - John 
Kennedy, Amiga Computing. 

October !9H9 AMIGA COMPUTING 85 




ro ORDER 1 
3 LEASE USE 1 
"HE FORM J 
DN PAGE 112 k 



A BASIC 68000-equipped Amiga 
is pretty nippy, all things 
considered. But where massive 
amounts of number crunching are 
required, a little extra speed is always 
welcome. Solid rendering, 3D CAD 
and many engineering calculations 
can take surprising amounts of time. 

For this reason CSA has produced 
the Midget Racer 68020 Piggyback 
board to cater for more demanding 
users - available in a myriad of 
specifications, from a 12MHz system 
without maths co-processor at £299 to 
a system with a 33MHz 68882 co- 
processor for a paltry £1,105. 

Why use a 68020 instead of a 
68000? Both are very complex chips; 
they don't have their entire 
instruction set hard-wired into them. 
Instead they load instructions from an 
on-chip microcode store. Hard- 
wiring would make them much faster 
- in the manner of RISC chips - but it 
would make them far more expensive 
as well. The 68020 also has a much 
expanded and optimised instruction 
set, and is a true 32 bit processor. 

Considerable time — nanoseconds — 
is wasted when fetching instructions 
from microcode. The 68020 has 256 
bytes of cache on the chip for fast 
access to frequently-used instructions. 
Thus in many cases a 68020 will 
process instructions faster than a 
68000 clocked at the same speed. 

The "Midget" tag is certainly apt. 
The large, square 68020 and the 
68881 nestle neatly with some custom 
logic chips and an oscillator on a tiny 
board 85 x 70 mm. Some rather 
clever logic goes on in the special 
chips. They ensure that the rest of the 
Amiga sends and receives data at 
7.2MHz while the 68020 talks to the 
68881 at full speed. This retains a 
modicum of compatibility, but the 
down side is that in this case an 
expensive 16MHz 68020 is needed to 
give 8MHz performance. 



H I'lTING tne Deasl was very 

JL difficult. After an infuriating 20 
minutes removing the case of my 
A500 - where a Torx screwdriver 
would have been useful — and 
fighting with the enormous RF shield, 
I got down to the circuit board. This 
coruscating gem yielded its processor 
in under a minute of frantic levering 
with a 16in screwdriver. Then real 
problems started. 
The board has 64 long pins to fit 



into the socket vacated by the 68000. 
They are long because it has to 
straddle the rom, which doesn't like 
being crowded. 

The pins are quite thick and 
although spaced correctly, they are a 
shade too large to fit easily into the 
socket. The manual advises the use of 
"moderate locating pressure". 

Obviously moderate must mean the 
entire weight of someone large and 



not altogether thin, leaning on a pair 
of freshly laundered Y-fronts cleverly 
folded over the board in order not to 
cause serious puncture wounding — 
from the sharp solder joints on top of 
the board - to the hands of the 
aforementioned large person. 'Cos 
that is what it took me to fit it. 

And even then the keyboard 
wouldn't go back properly, so the 
whole testing time had to be done 



Full 

speed 



ahead? 



W 
M 
M 
■ 



cm 

*•• o»w« Cm 

Mi»ta»H>i 

MUX, I 1 

HA\ 

Piggyback 
Users \| 



II 




T 



86 A Mid A COMPUTING October 1989 



■HARDWARE* 



without a cover on the machine. 

The accompanying disc contains a 
few programs, topped up with files 
off the Workbench 1.2 distribution 
disc and some C source code. The 
68020 auto-configures, along with the 
maths co-processor, although for 
some reason the distribution disc I 
received looked for a 68030 and 
68882. 

There are three useful programs 



and two benchmark tests. The three 
useful programs switch the cache on 
and off and tell you whether it is 
currently on. These could have been 
combined into one, but there must 
have been a reason for it to be 
otherwise. Apathy? 

The benchmarks are a hoot. One 
runs on a 68000 and doesn't use a 
maths co-processor; the oUier uses 
native 68020 with 68881 code. They 





Stewart C. Russell 
pushes the pedal 
to the metal and 
finds a processor 
accelerator that 

doesn't live up 
to expectations 




both produce the same output - a 
configuration test, an integer maths 
test and a floating point maths test. 

The floating point test, predictably 
enough, produces various images of 
parts of the Mandelbrot Set. Quite 
why so many people place great 
importance on something which looks 
like a cross between a turtle and a 
psychedelic road accident I'll never 
know. 

On a standard A500 the 68000 test 
tells you that you're running at 100 
per cent the speed of a standard 
Amiga, that the effective ram speed is 
pitiful - about 4MHz - due to wait 
states and custom chips, and that 
basically things go better with a 
68020 and a side order of 68881. 



THE 68020 test tells you that you 
have a speed increase of 1.6, or 
60 per cent for honesty, that the ram 
speed is even worse, and that you can 
manage around 85 kFlOPS (thousand 
Floating-point Operations Per 
Second), which is 15.8 times the 
speed of a standard Amiga. What do 
you believe? 

CSA claims that certain programs 
use enhanced set-up for enormouse 
speed increases. X-CAD Designer is 
one such package, Sculpt 4D is 
another. A fairly complex drawing of 
2,047 entities was used as the X-CAD 
test, with loading and re-drawing 
being timed with and without the 
board. 

Loading time was promising. 
Without the board it was 37 seconds, 
with it 34. Re-drawing threw up the 
first anomaly. Without the board die 
screen was regenerated in 5.5 
seconds. And with it 6 seconds! 

All tests were done in near identical 
conditions; no tests or results were 
conveniently forgotten to alter the 
performance of either set-up. 

In order to test the board's floating 
point speed, a little HiSoft Basic 
compiled program was employed 
which utilised the Motorola FFP 
routines in plotting 25,000 points of 
the Attractor of Henon. This 
mathematical figure gets more 
complex as more points are plotted, 
yet always ends up looking like a 
rather dejected banana. 

Again, there was a surprise. The 
vanilla 68000 clocked in at 35.5 
seconds while the Midget Racer took 



October 1989 AMIGA COMPl /7V(. 



■HARDWARE! 



7.8 per cent longer - 38.5 seconds. 

Serious disbelief began (o set in, so 
as a last floating point resort a high 
speed FFP Mandelbrot Set plotter was 
given the run through. Some sanity 
returned, but not much. Without the 
Midget Racer, 36.5 seconds; with it, 
33. 

The final numerical test was to see 
how both systems handled that most 
unresponsive lump of code, 
AmigaBasic. In plotting a 12-deep 
Dragon Curve (another fractal, sorry) 
using short integers throughout, it 
became very responsive indeed. 
Where the 68000 took an awful 82.75 
seconds, the CSA Midget Racer 
crawled in, beaten, at 92.5. 

In explaining the AmigaBasic 
result, ATH - the UK distributors - 
said it was "basically just one of these 
things". As they were very reasonable 
in still being around at 4:57 on a very 
hot afternoon and had some truly bad 
telephone hold music into the 
bargain, only a cad would have 



hai -d on the other results. 

" iie final test was the fairest and 
the toughest. Four games - Silkworm, 
Trained Assassin, World Class 
Leaderboard and Backlash - were 
grabbed at random and attempts were 
made to load them. The first two 
didn't, at all. The others did, but both 
showed at least an 80 per cent speed 
increase and consequently became 
utterly unplayable. 



I NLESS you really have to have 
V_y a 68020 for some reason other 
than for performance or compatibility, 
the CSA Midget Racer board cannot 
be recommended. 

If you are in a professional 
situation, where time really is money 
when rendering, draughting or 
Fortran programming - because the 
only 68020/68881 devoted compiler is 
Fortran/77 from Absoft - 
Commodore's card for the A2000 
gives better value. It may be at least 
three times the price — because it 
includes 32 bit ram, general niceness, 



and the ability to use the 68000 when 
you need it - but anylhing's better 
than a Midget Racer. 



RKPOKT CARD 



CSA Midget Racer (with lt.MII/. 68B81) 
Advanced Technology Holdings 0923 
817548 
£475 



ll lll l llll l 



EASE OF USE. ■ 

Very difficult to fit on an A 500. Raises 
gross compatibility problems. 



SOFTWARE ■ 

Very little, and almost useless. No 
libraries or includes. 



SPEED ■ 

Often slower on 68000 code, and very 
slow as 68020/68881 systems go. 



VALUE ~ 

No value speedwise and zero prestige 
value because it is hidden inside the 
case. 



OVERALL 



A very little speed increase for a lot of 
money. 




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TO ORDER PLEASE USE THE FORM ON PAGE 112 



88 AMIGA COMPUTING October HIH9 



_U SING, 

P R Q T E X T l 

Messing 
with? 



A MAN turned up with three 
cardboard boxes, and there 
was the Amy. I'd asked for some 
games and graphics demos, because 
that's what the Amy's supposed to be 
about. Right? Now. I wondered, after 
the Amstrad CPC, would this stuff 
blow my socks off? And yes, I guess 

that it did. 

The Wild Copper demo was totally 
amazing. Scroll and move and whizz 
about... I tried Outrun. Scroll and 
move and whizz about, yeah... After a 
time I realised what these wonderful 
16 bit games and graphics had 
something the 8 bit games had too. 
It's called, er, boredom. That's it. No 
fun. Kind of naff. Good time for the 
programmer, zilch for me. 

Let's face it, games are nothing. 
Graphics are fine for a moment of 
"ooer" and then they're just graphics. 
You admire what the programmer's 
achieved, yes. Like a dog whistling 
the theme from Neighbours. The 
performance is amazing, the result 
zero. It's almost more fun playing 
chess. 

But wordpros, now that's another 
story. The programming is great, but 
the fun is real. A good word 
processing program - and I believe 
that Protext is a very good one - 
becomes an extension of your 
thought. Not straight away; you have 
to learn to fly the thing first, but as 
you find that you don't have to 
remember that Ctrl-E clears the line 
after the cursor - you just do it 
without thinking - then you and the 
program grow together. 

I remember starting with Protext on 
the CPC. It's hard to believe, but that 
version goes almost as fast as the 



ft) 



Peter 
Ceresole 
stops 
worrying 
and learns 
to love 
the guru 




Amiga, even though its driving a 
funny little Z80 processor. But 
compared to my typing anything's 
pretty well instantaneous, and the 
speed at which things happened was 
quite intimidating. 

Hit Ctrl-Y instead of Shift-Y and... 
what the heck was that? The whole 
text vanishes. Very frightening after 
an hour's script writing. Still, it's a 
good reminder of the second file and 
how to reach it. And after a while it 
all begins to feel really friendly and 
familiar. Tickety-boo. 

Which is when you can start 
making it into your program. 

YOU can start with Config, 
which is very friendly and full 
of menus and things. For instance all 
programs come set up for 66 line 
paper, which is a foolish American 
size, whereas here we all - in the 
spirit of Bruges of course - use A4, 
which is 70 lines long. I also hate 



right-justified text, especially in 
letters. They look as though they were 
written by Robocop. 

Changing those two is a piece of 
cake. I was going to change the 
colours. The CPC and PCW have high 
resolution mono screens, and I'm 
used to working with black text on a 
green background. In fuzzy Amy 
medium-res though, 1 think the 
Protext colours are about right. 

But the essence is to go into Config 
and play with it Browse. Think of all 
the things you might want to do. and 
do them. If you're worried about not 
being able to get back to what you 
had after some foolish experiment - 
what, magenta ruler lines? - then 
before you start, copy the file 
PROTEXT.CFG on to another disc. In 
an emergency you can always copy it 
back on to your program disc. 

However, Config is the tiniest 
beginning. You can change the 
operation of Protext your way until 
you are both singing in harmony. The 
program becomes the house you 
built, with all the comfort and 
relaxation that that brings. 



PROTEXT comes with a 
programming language of its 
own, and it's been made unbelievably 
easy to use. You hardly ever have to 
touch it as a language, but you can 
start to make things happen any way 
you want, no sweat. 

For example, how about saving as 
you go? "They" say that Protext v4.30 
will have a periodic save built in, 



(hitober 1989 AMIGA CUMl'l 



USING 




especially useful for hard drive users. 
Deeply wonderful, but Real Soon 
Now. so No Use to Us. 

I've had a couple of meetings with 
the guru already on this machine, 
always from Workbench. Pretext so 
far has been bulletproof, but I'd 
rather have something safely in the 
oxide, so I've set up a simple little 
macro, save-and-continue. It'll always 
run from edit mode, so I started from 
there. 

After hitting Ctrl-Fl to start 
recording, I assigned it to Alt-S and 
pressed the keys <Esc> S <Return> 
<Return> <Esc> in that precise 
order, and then finished the recording 
with Ctrl-Fl again. 

And that's it. Any time I'm thinking 
and not typing, I go Alt— S. Seconds 
later the piece so far is saved and I'm 
back exactly where I was. All it needs 
is for you to give the Hie a name some 
time before you first save. In fact the 
best time is before you start by using 
the Protext Name command. 

Obviously, if you want to keep 
these macros, use the SaveKeys 
command - SVK for short - to save 
them. 

You don't have to think of 
everything at once; you can add a 
definition here, another there, and 
build up a useful set in Protext.Key, 
which is the default key definition 
file. If you want an alternative set, for 
instance for standard business 
phrases, save it in Stuffy. Key. Again, 
if you feel you might screw up, you 
can always copy Protext.Key to 
another disc before you start. The 
important thing is to play without 




inhibition. 

Another really obvious macro is 
DEL #?.BAK. (Lord, hash-question 
mark? There really is life on Mars, 
then). You can set Protext so it 
doesn't make back-up files by using 
Config. Personally, that would make 
me feel terribly insecure, but it's still 
nice to be able to zap all the .BAK 
files occasionally. So into F3 it goes. 
That's needed most often from 
command mode, so you record the 
macro from there. 

I recorded another one from edit 

Most of the features of 
Protext discussed in this 
article can be used 
with the version of the 
program which was given away on 
last month's cover disc. Back 
issues are available from Database 
Direct on 051-357 2961 or use the 
order form in the back of this 
issue. 

mode - <Esc> DEL #?.BAK 
<Return> <Esc>. It runs from Alt-B 
(Back-up? Geddit?) and works nicely 
with Alt-S (save-and-continue). The 
difference between these two is that 
the first one lands you in command 
mode, the second in edit. 

SIMILARLY, if you use some 
printer control codes a lot, for 
instance Italic, then you can put that 
on AH— Shift— I. It saves a key stroke, 
and that counts when you're motoring 
along. 

But there's a lot more you can do in 
this line. 

Suppose you want to save a ruler 
line. Say you've fiddled about getting 
just what you want, for one special 



bit of layout, then you go back to 
alternating between two basic rulers, 
which is what Protext is set up to do 
instantly. 

If you want your special layout 
again, you can go back, find the ruler 
- you could leave a place marker 
there if you felt like it - put block 
markers at either end and copy it to 
where you want it. Now that's what I 
call a boring way of doing things. 
Much better to store it where you can 
get it back - and a good place is 
above the first ruler line. 

So start your macro recording 
(Ctrl-Fl) and assign this trick to, say, 
Alt-Shift-P, a special version of Put. 
Assume you'll be starting somewhere 
in the ruler line you want to save. 
Now place a block marker at the 
right-hand end of the line then at the 
left-hand end. Put in a place marker 
so you can get back there, and use 
number nine in case you've another 
eight in use. 

Go to the top of the document and 
make an empty line, then copy your 
ruler line into it. Kill the block 
markers. 

Go down one line, and copy the 
default ruler to below your stored 
ruler with Ctrl-R. This is necessary in 
case you're using the default ruler for 
your text. Then go back to place 
marker nine and erase it. Go down a 
line, and that's it. Figure 1(a) shows 
the sequence of keypresses and what 
each one does. 

Now you've saved the line, you can 
get it back using (surprise us all) All- 
Shift— R as a special version of 
Retrieve. The keypresses for the 
macro are shown in Figure 1(b). 

That brings the line back. In fact, 
any kind of line can be stored there, 



KEYPRESSES 


RESULT 


Ctrl— » 


Go to end of 1 1ne 


F9 


place b^ock marker 


Ctrl-«- 


Go to beginning of line 


F9 


Place block marker 


Ctrl-* 9 


Set place marker number 9 


Ctrl-[ 


Go to top of document 


Ctrl-I 


Insert a blank 1 ine 


F10 


Move block 


Ctrl-K 


Remove all block markers 


Shift-Return 


Move to left margin of next line 


Ctrl-R 


Copy previous ruler but one 


Ctrl-* 9 


Go to place marker number 9 


Del 


Delete character at cursor 


Ctrl-Return 


Move to left margin of next line 


Figure I fa) 



KEYPRESSES 


RESULT 


Ctrl-4- 


Go to beginning of line 


Ctrl-t 9 


Set place marker number 9 


Ctrl-[ 


Go to top of document 


F9 


Place block marker 


Ctrl— ¥ 


Go to end of 1 ine 


F9 


Place block marker 


Ctrl-* 9 


Go to place marker number 9 


F10 


Copy block 


Ctrl-K 


Remove all block markers 


Ctrl--* 


Go to end of 1 ine 


Backspace 


Delete character before cursor 



Figure I (b) 



90 AMU, A COMPi'TISii (h:tt>b#r IftHH 




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October 1989 WUGA COMF1 V7\C fl1 



USING 

noun 



not just a ruler line, but anything else 
is likely to be printed or otherwise 
acted upon and could give you a lot 
of trouble, so beware. 

These macros may look like a lot to 
set up. but they're a total piece of 
cake to use - it all happens in about 
three seconds - and, much more 
important, they're fun. That's the 
thing. But not nearly as much fun as 
this next one. 

YOU have to imagine the scene. 
You've been writing to an 
important prospective client. This is a 
person with great potential. Your 
future relationship is at stake. You've 



nice if you could just winkle it out of 
the letter and bung it up there, in the 
second file, ready for printing? 

This one assumes that the second 
file is empty and that the letter has 
the addressee's name and address on 
the top left. Even if, as I do, you have 
your own address on the top right, 
this macro will extract the one you 
want. 

Here is what to do. Assign it to Alt- 
Shift-M (for Mail): 

Go to the top of the file. Depending 
on your standard letter layout, go 
down to the first line of proper text, 
as opposed to stored codes and ruler 
lines. Put in a block marker. 

Go down enough lines - I've used 
eight in Figure II - to cope with any 
address, then go to column 35 and 
put down another block marker. 



>sm 11 

M1ss Margaret Hilda Roberts 

"Tina" 

Market Lane 

Grantham 

GR4 OALT 



Peter Ceresole 
512 Protext Lane 
A500 1FF 



"Well hello there, I'm Macro Man! 



Figure II 



deployed the best of your 
communication skills. The letter is 
crawling but not obsequious. 

You've taken great care not to split 
any infinitives, nor to actually tell any 
lies. You spell check (oh Lord!) and 
then... there's the envelope. The 
address is by now incomprehensible, 
the postcode endless. Wouldn't it be 



KEYPRESSES 


RESULT 


ctn-[ 


Go to top of doc 


Ctrl-G L3 Return 


Go to line 3 


F9 


Place block marker 


Ctrl-G L11 Return 


Go to line 11 


Ctrl-G C35 Return 


Go to column 35 


F9 


Place block marker 


Ctrl-B 


Go Into Box mode 


Ctrl-v 


Switch docs 


'sm 25 Return 


Side margin of 25 chars 


>tm 10 Return 


Top margin of 10 1 ines 


>pl 25 Return 


Page length of 25 lines 


Ctrl-0 


Copy block from other doc 


Ctrl-Y 


Switch docs 


Ctrl-K 


Remove all block markers 


Ctrl-B 


Exit Box mode 


Ctrl-Y 


Switch docs 


Esc 


Go into command mode 



Figure III 



Go into box mode with Ctrl-B. 
Then swap to the second file and lay 
down the stored commands to print 
on your envelopes with your printer. 
For me these are ">sm 25", ">tm 
10" and ">pl 25", but you can make 
them what you want. 

After this, swap back to the first 
document and bring the block across 
from the other file 
with Ctrl-O. then 
go back to the 
letter and do a 
clear up by killing 
the markers and 
switching off box 
mode. Finally, 
you hop back 
to the second file 
and go into 
command mode, 
ready to print out 
the address. 

If the block you 
copied was a little 
too big, it's easy to 
go back and trim 
a couple of lines 
off the bottom with 



a few mindless key strokes. It takes 
about seven seconds to work. It's 
great fun to watch. The keypresses are 
detailed in Figure III. 

The important thing with all these 
macros is to clean up after you. In 
this case, you leave the letter file the 
way it was at the start of the 
operation. By putting down a place 
marker you could even return to the 
letter exactly where you left it, but 
I've found I'm happy with the macro 
the way it is. 

Both on the Amstrad CPC and PCW 
I use it constantly, but on those 
machines there's no macro recording 
facility. You have to program it in 
Basic or in a Protext Exec file, which 
is considerably more trouble initially 
although it works just the same. I 
suppose the price you pay on the 
Amy is that Protext is more than 200k 
long, whereas in CP/M (yawn) it's 
about 50k, and three 16k roms 
contain the program in Amsdos. 

That's just the beginning; you can 
macro till the chips come home, or 
you run out of memory, which is the 
only drawback. You could store the 
front and end of all possible letters as 
macros. I've found it simpler to use 
standard files for that. But obviously, 
if you've got something to write that'll 
need you to lay down the word 
"homozygotic" more than four times, 
it might be worth making a temporary 
macro of it. 



acros ma ^ e me program 
lYl yours. I first learnt most of 
this from David Foster, who wrote 
articles that opened my eyes to the 
possibilities on the CPC and PCW. 

But there are other great wheezes. 
Next month we'll have a go at some 
philosophy with printer drivers and 
exec files. In the meantime, if you 
have an Epson compatible printer, try 
putting the following at the top of a 
file, and then print it. 



>oc 27 65 6 15 27 83 1 

And may all your bugs be little ones. 



• AH the macros shown in this 
article are on the cover disc in the 
Protext.key file which is in the 
Mucking-with-macros drawer. 



92 AMIGA COMPUTING October 1989 



WIN A TRIP 

IN THE 
HOT SEAT 

You can experience Silverstone at high speed 



YOUR skin crawls with a tingle 
of excitement as a racing car 
comes into view. The wonderful, 
monstrous noise, the sheer power and 
beauty of a machine designed purely 
to go very fast. Even watching the 
cars lined up on a grid makes you 
shiver with anticipation. 

Motor racing is a sport of contrasts. 
While the dicing is exciting and the 
racing frantic, the driver is keeping as 
cool as possible, concentrating on the 
smoothest and fastest line. 

Artronic wants to give you a taste 
of the action. Everybody will have the 
chance to get behind the wheel with 
Fast Lane. And one lucky reader will 
have the chance to experience 
Silverstone at high speed for real. 

Artronic has arranged a fun day at 
the British Grand Prix circuit, a trip 



around the magic three miles taking 
Copse Corner and Maggots Curve at 
incredible speeds, followed by lunch 
and a visit to the nearby Spice factory 
where the car Fast Lane simulates is 
built and tested. 

The Spice '89 Group Cl racing car 
is an astonishing vehicle. For several 
years Spice has dominated the C2 
class but now they have moved up 
into the big league where they are 
taking on the likes of Porsche, Jaguar, 
Mercedes and Aston Martin. Racing 
for between three and 24 hours at up 
to 200 mph the endurance races are a 
test of skill, reliability and 
performance. 

Your test is one of knowledge. 
Answer three questions correctly and 
you could be on your way to 
Silverstone. 



(1) Racing cars used to have national 
colours. Italians red, French blue, 
Germany white or silver. What colour 
did British racing cars wear before 
the war? 

(A) British Racing Purple 

(B) British Racing Pink 

(C) British Racing Green 



(2) Artronic has produced a ray 
tracing program for the Amiga. What 
is it called? 

(A) Ray-Tracer 

(B) Solid Modeller 

(C) C-Light 



(3) One lap of Silverstone is 2.970 
miles. If a car completes a lap in 1 
minute 16 seconds what is its average 
speed? 

(A) 119.00 mph 

IB) 140.68 mph 

(C) 201.22 mph 



Send your entries to: 
Fast Lane Compo, Amiga Computing. 
2nd Floor, North House. 78-84 Ongar 
Road, Essex, CM15 9BG. 



Name 

Address. 



Telephone number. 



October 1989 AMIGA COMF1 'TI\C 93 







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Edit two files «■ time 
Keyboard o' mouse operwon 



'...merely the best word 
processor for the Amiga' 



- Reviewed in 
Amiga Computing, 
January 1969 



SE£S» 5« ineXDensive WP P8Cka9e which 

judged". - Your Computer _ Computin g 

•THe great strength ol the ^^^^^^ Computing 
"Deserves very serious cons.derat.on Amstra 



ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY, USING THE FORM ON PAGE 112 



■GRAPHICS! 



r 



T 



NDERNEATH the physics 
department of Edinburgh 
University is a £1.7 million 
supercomputer. Its favourite tour de 
force is ray tracing. Thanks to 200 
transputers and a mere 800 gigabytes 
of memory it can draw a picture of 
three shiny spheres on a chess board 
in half a minute. The Amiga can't 
reach such lofty heights, but it is the 
first home computer powerful enough 
to do ray tracing at all. 

To produce a ray traced picture you 
need a scene made up of various 
three-dimensional bodies and one or 
more light sources to illuminate it. 
The computer then takes over, using 
complex mathematics to work out 
how intensely each pixel will be 
illuminated and the position of any 
shadows. After much number 
crunching you should see a 
reasonable approximation to what the 
scene would look like in real life. 

C-Light claims to be able to do this. 
For your £50 you get two discs and a 
comprehensive ring-bound instruction 
manual. The main disc holds three 
programs - the configuration 
program, the scene editor and the 
drawing or rendering program - all 
accessed from Workbench; if you 
only have 512k you will have to close 
every window possible before 
attempting to run the drawing 
program. 

The maths libraries are read from 
the Workbench disc, so it is sensible 
to use the faster 1.3 ones. And two 
disc drives would be a help. 

The configuration program lets you 
toggle between NTSC or PAL screens, 
lets you choose overscan or not 
(underscan?), and whether you want 
interlace on or off. It works rather like 
Preferences, saving a short 
configuration file which is used the 
next time you boot up the program. 

The scene editor is where you set 
up your picture, which must be made 
up of combinations of three basic 
shapes - cubes, spheres and 
cylinders, although cones and 
hemispheres are promised in future 
upgrades. This review is of version 
1.03. 

You select the shape you want from 
a list of gadgets and the shape's 
outline is displayed on screen. You 
use the mouse to move it in the x and 
y directions, click the right button 




Alastair Scott brings his / fantasies 
to life with a ray tracing program that 
doesn't burn a hole in your pocket 




Sci-fi scenes are easv 




It's possible to construct quite realistic objects. 



October 1989 AMIGA COMPtniXG 95 



■GRAPHICS! 



and move the mouse up and down to 
move your shape in the z direction — 
that is, in and out of the screen. 
Clicking the left button brings up a 
requester which allows you to alter 
the shape's size and rotate it about all 
three axes. 



SHAPES can be in one of three 
main user-defined colours - the 
program calculates all the 
intermediate shades - or it can work 
as a mirror. Once satisfied that all has 
been done to size, position and colour 
your shape, you move on to the next 
one and repeat the process. There are 
re-size and delete options if you 
change your mind about a shape you 
positioned earlier, and you can 
change the main colours and the size 
of the whole scene. 

You are allowed up to 170 shapes. 
Once finished, you set the positions of 
your eye and of the light sources - 
again, up to 170 are allowed - and 
then another small file is saved to 
disc. You then exit to Workbench and 
run the drawing program, which 
loads the file you created with the 
scene editor, then asks you whether 
you want shadows, which slow down 
drawing, or anti-aliasing, which is a 
method of softening the edges of 
jagged objects. 

Using sliders you can change the 
intensity of your light sources, of the 
background light and the blending of 
colours. Lastly, you click the Go! 
gadget, the screen clears, and the 
picture begins to be calculated and 
drawn. You can interrupt it at any 
time if it looks as if it's going wrong. 

When the drawing is finished you 
can save it as an IFF file, allowing it 
lo be manipulated by art programs. 



Included is a public domain IFF 
viewer which allows you to see your 
efforts (and the demonstration 
pictures) without loading C-Light. 

ON the second disc, complete 
with some stunning examples, 
is a pair of programs which allow you 
to string several frames together to 
create animations. To use them 
properly you really need 1 meg and 
two disc drives, plus lots of free time 
because each frame must be designed 
separately using the scene editor. 

There is an option which allows 
stereo pictures to be viewed using a 
most suspicious-sounding contraption 
(not supplied) called the Haitex 3D 
LCD Shutter Glasses, which Amiga 
Computing reviewed back in October 
1988. 

My description makes designing a 
picture or animation seem easy, but 
there are problems. The scene editor 
is spoiled by going overboard with 
Intuition. It would be easier at times 
to type the size of an object or its 
angles of rotation in the form 100, 50, 
-50, but you are not allowed to, the 
figures must be chosen via the 
laborious and frustrating use of 
sliders. 

Secondly, positioning a ball is 
error-prone. It often lags behind the 
cursor and keeps moving after you 
move the cursor away to do 
something else. Again, it would have 
been helpful to provide an option to- 
type in coordinates and see the result 
before accepting or rejecting it. 

The drawing program is excellent, 
actually doing the drawing is where 
the main problems lie. 

There is no error checking. This 
may be too complex to implement, 
but it is most annoying to wait four 
hours only to find that you 
accidentally put your single light 




A scene from an impressive demo animation 



source behind instead of in front of a 
big shape and that all you can see is a 
shadow on a dark background. Two 
other omissions which are to be 
rectified in future upgrades are 
Halfbrite and HAM. 

The big difficulty, which is not the 
program's fault, is speed, or rather the 
lack of it. Artronic claims that time to 
draw pictures varies between two 
hours and four days and this is 
broadly true. For example, a picture 
with one light source and one ball - 
the quickest shape to compute - in 
640 x 256 resolution with no shadows 
took 25 minutes. A similar picture 
with nine blocks (a la Stonehenge) 
and shadows took six hours. 

BECAUSE of the amount of 
trigonometry needed to 
calculate each pixel, the only way to 
speed the program up would be to 
buy an accelerator board with a 
maths co-processor which could take 
advantage of the fast 1.3 maths 
libraries. Failing this, set the program 
running before you go to bed and see 
what you get in the morning. 

The results can be impressive. In 
fact too impressive to be true, because 
ray tracing assumes that a surface 
always reflects and refracts identical 
intensities of light, which is an over- 
simplification. A real surface reflects, 
refracts and absorbs relative 
intensities depending on the angle 
which the ray makes with the surface. 

Radiosity - second generation ray 
tracing — uses real surfaces, with 
softer and more realistic images as a 
result. Unfortunately it is so 
formidably complex that it can only 
be implemented on supercomputers. 
Or will Artronic prove me wrong? 



RKPORT CARD 



C-Light (vl.03) 
Artronic Systems 
£49.95 



im 



EASEOFUSE 

Defining shapes is clumsy. Otherwise, 
no great problems. 



E 



SPEED. 

As fast as you can get considering the 
hardware. 

VALUE. 



Cheap, and gives impressive results. 

Excellent manual, full use of Intuition. I 
await upgrades with interest. 



00 AMIGA COMPUTING October 19B9 




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STARS WARS TRILOGY 16.90 

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THE STORY SO FAR 13.90 
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PRECIOUS METAL '9 90 

Xenon. Capt Blood 
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TRIAD - 3 Game Pack 18.90 

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HIT DISKS (Vol.1) — - .16.90 

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HIT DISKS (Vol.2) 1690 

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MEGAPACK ____ 16 90 

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199 00 

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59 90 

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Debits PhotoLab 49.90 

Deluxe Video 79 90 

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DIGIVIEW GOLD (PAL) 119.90 



Director (The) 

•Director Toolkit 

Fancy 3D Fonts .„ „■„,„■, 

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Modeler 3D 

Photon Paint 2 

Pi* mate 



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GRAPHIC STARTER IOT 59.90 

Aegis Animator, Aegis Draw, 
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Pro Sound Designer r „,,. 59 90 

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Sculpt 4D Junior 99.90 



Sculpt 4D 339.99 


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__. 159 90 


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199 90 


Artec C Developer 


129.90 


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139 90 


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11£50 


GFA Basic (V.3). 


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Hlsoft Devpac (2) , 44.90 

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AB Zoo 

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Includes: Page Setter \2 

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Compeiiion Pro 5000 ___.__„. 
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Arcade Joystick _ 

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DEPT AC, 6 MUMBY CLOSE, NEWARK, NOTTS NG24 1JE 



(Jctobor 1989 AMIGA COMPUTING 97 




(or 28kHz) unless you add a speed-up 
hoard and some 32 bit rani, meaning 
only A2()n0 owners need apply. While 
28kHz isn't all that bad. dedicated 
systems are starling to offer sampling 
rates as high as 38 or 44.1kHz. As 
with bit-path size, a higher sampling 
rate translates into better sound 
quality. Although the human ear can 
only hear 22kHz you need a belter 
rate for true quality. Compact discs 
sample at 44kHz. 

At least four companies - Karl 
Denton Associates. Wavetable 
Technologies. KCT Sampleware and 
Datasound Inc - produce libraries of 
sampled sounds on disc from acoustic 
and orchestral instruments to electric 
guitars, synthesisers, drums and 
special effects. 

The advantage of these is that 
they're no fuss, lust pop in the disc 
and play. They are particularly 
convenient if you don't have room in 
your bedroom to fit a 60 piece 
orchestra. The disadvantage is that 
although editing software allows you 
to modify existing samples 
significantly, there is still a limit to 
how far you can stray from the 



Dean 

Friedman, 
rock star 
and 
musical 

magician, tunes his 

ears to the 
quadraphonic 
delights of the Amiga 

DIGITAL editing is what makes 
your A500 the most flexible 
musical instrument you are ever 
likely to buy. Although it doesn't say 
it anywhere on the box. your Amiga 
is a four voice polyphonic synthesiser 
and sampler - not all that different 
from dedicated commercial ones like 
the Roland D50 or the Knsoniq EPS. 

The only real difference between 
your Amiga and dedicated 
commercial samplers and synthesisers 
is the Amiga's slightly lower bit-path 
and its fewer number of voices. 
Today's samplers and synths have 
sample word lengths of 12 to 16 bits, 
whereas the Amiga only offers eight. 

A higher bit-path provides a wider 
dvnamic range and. as a result, better 



Smash and 



sound. Most commercial synthesisers 
and samplers offer between 8 and 32 
voices. The Amiga, with only four, 
can be limiting in certain musical 
situations, such as trying to compose 
multi-section orchestral arrangements. 

But for creating sketches of 
arrangements, or for the kind of 
sparse instrumentation typical of 
many of today's pop records, the 
Amiga is perfectly adequate. 

Another important issue is the 
Amiga's sampling rate, the number of 
times per second that a real sound is 
digitised. The Amiga has a effective 
maximum sampling rate of 28.867Hz 



Dean Friedman is an '~oert on 
computer music. o~ the Amiga 
particular. Baser' in the US, he runs 
the New York ^IchnaLjjf Synthesis. 
Dean has had a nur-»wr of chart 
hits including Lydia and Lucky 
Stars. He also wrote the title music 
for the television series Boon. 



original sound. 
The only other solution is to sample 

your own sounds. 

MORE than half a dozen audio 
digitisers are available for the 
Amiga at the moment, all offering 
comparable audio digitising features. 

An audio digitiser is a small box 
with accompanying software that 
attaches to your parallel port. In the 
box is an analogue-to-digital 
converter which changes the sound 
into a standard Amiga IFF file, 
allowing you to import your samples 
into almost every music program. 

The analogue input to the digitiser 
can take the form of either an acoustic 
sound like drums, or voices captured 
with a microphone from a cassette 
deck. You can solve the orchestra in 
the bedroom problem by buying 
sound effects records. 

Typically, a user will select the 
optimum sampling rate, the volume 
and the desired length of the sample 



M AMIGA COMPUTING Ottoher /WW 



■ M U S I C ■ 



according to available memory. Once 
these values are set, you place the 
digitiser in sampling or record mode 
and capture a sound. 

The whole process is not unlike 
traditional (analogue) tape recording. 
You strive for a clean sound, a good 
signal-to-noise ratio and an accurate 
performance of the sound being 
sampled. The real difference becomes 
apparent after the sound has been * 
recorded. What makes sampling — 
otherwise known as digital recording 
- so powerful is the degree to which 
you can edit your sound once it has 
been captured. 

Almost all sample editing programs 
share some common features: They 
offer a graphic display of the sampled 
waveform, complete with zoom 
features, which can be edited using 
cut and paste operations by clicking 
and dragging with the mouse. 

Samples are looped to extend their 
sustain lengths. This is a way of 
turning a 2 second sample into 
something that can be performed for 
10 or 20 seconds, or even longer. II 
makes performance of a sample more 
flexible and it conserves memory. 




This trick is used to good effect in the 
demo music on this month's cover 
disc. Other common sampler edit 
features include waveform merge and 
mix. sample everse and cross fades. 

All these fi atures enable you 
creatively to ilter/*^y modify your 
original soun e/Jna.fcrial in a number 
of useful and interesting ways. 
Cutting the attack out of a piano note 
can yield an unusual string-like 
sound. Maybe you want to hear what 
it sounds like when you merge a 
saxophone with an oboe? (You get a 
Saxofobo.) Remember, once your 
sound resides in the digital realm 
almost anything is possible. 

Once you've built up an impressive 
sample library of your dog barking, 
the door slamming and your kid 
brother burping, what do you do with 
them? 

Well, because Amiga samples are 
stored in standard Amiga IFF format, 
any can be employed in most music 
applications. Almost all Amiga 
sequencer programs - KCS. Dynamic 



SAMPLE CHOPIN 
LISZT 

Audio Digitiser: £27.99 from 

Trilogic on 0274 691115. 

Pro Sampler Studio: £69.95 from 

Datel on 0782 744707. 

Future Sound 500: £79.95 from 

Applied Visions on 0923 818078. 

Pro-Sound Designer: £79.95 from 

Power Computing on 0234 273248. 

AMAS: £99.95 from Microdeal on 

0726 68020. 

Real-Time Sound Processor: £115 
from HB Marketing on 0895 
444433. 

Studio, Soundscape and friends - 
allow you to trigger samples directly 
from within the sequencer program. 

String quartets, pop arrangements, 
horror film soundtracks complete 
with screaming special effects, can all 
be sampled and sequenced directly 
into your Amiga and played back out 
of its own stereo outputs. 

PC owners have to lay down big 
bucks to buy Midi cables and extra 
samplers and synthesisers in order to 
create music with their computers; 
you have a choice. 

If you want to go the full blown 
Midi route, just plug an interface into 
your Amiga and go shopping. But if 
you're still getting your feet wet with 
computer music and aren't ready to 
shell out another £500 to £5,000 for 
additional synthesiser or sampling 
modules, all you need to create 
complex polyphonic digital 
recordings is already crammed right 
into your Amiga. 

In addition to music packages that 
trigger audio samples, more and more 
non-musical applications have started 
using the Amiga's internal sampling 
ability. Several new video and 
animation programs such as 
MovieSettor and PageFlipper have 
begun offering the ability to trigger 
samples syne'ed directly to graphic 
sequences and animations. 

These products are just a few 
examples of applications thai are 
finally beginning lo tap the full 
potential of the Amiga as a multi- 
media workstation. 

PERHAPS the best and most 
obvious proof of the Amiga's 
impressive music-making abilities are 
the digitised soundtracks that 
accompany more and more of its 
most popular computer games. 
Some people are reluctant to 



acknowledge that the Amiga was 
designed to be the world's most 
powerful game computer. That's the 
real reason it comes out of the box 
with enhanced graphics and audio 
capabilities. Lately this aspect of the 
Amiga's history has been downplayed 
in a bid to position the machine as a 
serious business computer. 

Well I'm sure Commodore would 
be delighted to convince the business 
community that the Amiga is a 
respectable piece of hardware, 
suitable for even the dullest business 
applications. 

But in the meantime anyone who 
has ever experienced the Amiga's 
incredible animation and sound 
generting features on a fast paced 
shoot- 'em-up or multi-levelled 
adventure game needs no convincing 
as to the Amiga's claim to being the 
premier game machine on the planet. 

So if you're still listening to your 
Amiga's audio output through your 
monitor's tiny speaker - shame on 
you! Plug the stereo outputs into a 
good hill system, boot up Firebird's 
Savage and make sure your shoes are 
tied light or the sound'll knock your 
socks off. 

And then you tell me how they 
managed to cram all that incredible 
music and sound - plus a game and 
great graphics - on to a single 3.5m 
disc! 

I don't know how its done, but I do 
know how all the sounds and music 
sequences were produced - using 
many of the very same digitising, 
sample editing and sequencing 
packages we've discussed here. 

Can you really make music on an 
Amiga? Does Spock have pointy ears! 

SYNTH ON A DISC 

SYNTHIA, by the Other Guys 
Software, offers another approach 
to creating sounds on the Amiga. It 
uses algorithms to drive the 
Amiga's audio channels in order to 
emulate various modes of synthesis 
such as subtractive. additive and 
FM. 

It's sort of a synthesiser on a 
3.5in disc and is a great means of 
generating unusual timbres and 
textures as an alternative to 
ordinary sampling. 

At the moment The Other Guys 
don't have a UK distributor, but 
you can contact them on 0101 801 
753 7620, or write to: The Other 
Guys. P.O.Box H, Logan, UT 
84321. 



Octoher I9H9 AMIGA COMPUTING 99 



★★★★*★★★★★★★*★****★***★*************** 



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PUBLIC APOLOGY 

M.D. Office Supplies would like to take this opportunity to apologise to all its 
competitors. We shall with immediate effect supply direct to the public. 
Computer discs. Storage boxes, etc. AT BELOW WHOLESALE PRICES 



5.25" DISCS & BOXES 

255 75' DS-DD 9S TPI with 50 Capacrty Lockable Storage Boi £12.49 

50 5.25" DS-DD 96 TPI with 100 Capacfty Lockable Storage Box £t8.49 

75 5.25' DS-DD 96 TPI with 100 Capacity Lockable Storage Box £23.49 

100 5.25' DS-DD 96 TPI with 100 Capacity Lockable Storage Box - £29 49 

200 5.25' DS-DD 96 TPI with 2 100 Capacity lockable Storage Boxes .-£54.99 
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25 3.5' DS-DD 135 TPI with 40 Capacity Lockable Storage Box £22.95 

35 3.5" DS-DD 135 TPI with 60 Capacity Lockable Storage Box £31.95 

45 3.5" DS-DD 135 TPI with 80 Capacity Lockable Storage Box „ £37.95 

55 3.5' DS-DD 135 TPI with 60 Capacity Lockable Storage Box . £4095 

65 3.5" OS-DD 135 TPI with 60 Capacity Lockable Storage Box £44 95 

75 3.5' DS-DD 135 TPI with 80 Capacity Lockable Storage Box £49 95 

OUR 35" DISCS ARE VERY CAREFULLY SELECTED TO GIVE YOU 100% ERROR 
FREE PERFORMANCE. EACH DISC IS OFFERE0 WITH OUR 100% MONEY 
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HIGH DENSITY 5.25' 

25 SB' OS HD16M8 ptuaMBOX 



DISCS 

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100 5.25* DS HO 1.6MB plus 100 BOX OU 

HIGH DENSITY 3.5" DISCS 

10 DS HD 15* DISCS €19 99 

30 DS HD 35' DISCS with 40 Capacity Boa £57 99 

50 DS HO 3 5' DISCS with 80 Capacity Bo. W 99 



BULK BUYERS 


100DSDD 3.5TPI 


£59 99 


150 DSDD 3.57PI 


.£87 99 


200 0SDD 3.5TPI 


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500DSDD35TPI - 


£23999 


250 DSDD 5.25*TPI__ 


£64.99 


500 DSDD 5.25TPI — 


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1000 DSDD 525TPI 


£21939 





■ D. OFFICE SUPPLIES 

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TELESALES HOTLINES: 0689-61400 



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1 1 



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AMIGA 




Don't miss these 
back issues 



April 1989 issue 



Big Screen Hera - we can't take our eyes ah* the monitor 
with a 1008 x 1008 resolution. Triangle TV, tha company 
which manned the Amiga to commercial video, (ells its tale. 
Gen up on genlocks - we look at the four main contenders. 
Superplan, the businessman's menage-a-trois flexes its 
muscles. Zoetrope. animation at a price. Amigas by accident 
- we meet the Burocare think-tank. 



May 1989 issue 



Gold Disk's MovieSetter - cartoon capers on-screen. GFA 
Basic roasted, The Amiga Show in the Big Apple. Prettier 
icons with Icon Paint. Opus-1 plays specialist music Learn 
how lo use functions from Basic and the Move command 
from machine code. Sam Littiewood looks at (he different 
forms of ray tracing and rendering. TR Sketch dragged to the 
trashcan WordPerfect Library fares a little better. Plus a 
mega collection of games including trie earth-shattering 
Populous and the truly cosmic Cosmic Pirate. 



June 1989 issue 



Deluxe Paint 111 - the number one art program gets better 
with animation. Scorpion heads up the games. The 
Aprodraw graphics tablet, using lines from Basic Seuipt- 
Animate 40 reviewed - a bargain at f 400' The best of the 



Public Domain and the CMI processor accelerator 
through its paces at UMHr 



run 



July 1989 issue 



Exclusive review of Commodore A590. X-Cad designer, the 
Amiga program which leaves AutoCad in the Shade. 
Pagestream - quality OTP on a low budget. Essential tips on 
how to make more room on your Workbench disc. Musical 
scores ten out of ten with Dr. Ts Copyist Professional. 
Teaching is more important than Education, a look at 
Amiga's in schools. Plus a packed games review section. 



August 1989 issue 



First sensationel cover disc. Trained Assassin, Raider and 
more. Vortex hard drive review, 68020 runs slow. 
Powerdrome, 3D Pool, R-type and Balance o' Power all get 
the joystick treatment. The model universe gives you a Basic 
Solar system. Cure the hard disc blues - how to use prep 
and format to optimise disc performance. 



September 1989 issue 



Bumper business disc. Day by day, Protext and Hoi.ie 
accounts lead the way. How to program Copperlists from 
assembler and meus from Basic. SuperPic - the best frame 
grabber around. Power Computing's Turbo 3 Is the best buy 
per megabyte but with 100 meg on line rfs an expensive 
proposition. Epson's LQ-660 top notch 24 pm colour. 
Programming ethics contested Argonaut Vs Ariadne. 
Devices: explained under the workbench. Turn your Amiga 
into an Apple Mac with A-M ax. DeBn Friedman on music 
plus some amazing games reviews. 



TO ORDER PLEASE USE THE FORM ON PAGE 112 



IOO AMIGA COMPUTING October W89 



01 (OYO 1 



/ BOOK NOW! 
^ / For our next 
Video & Graphics 
Weekend Course 



II 




ii 



Designer £99.95 
Professional £299.1 



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he dawn of a new 
'age in electronic 
communications 



microliDk 



jX^MicroLink hikes on a completely new 
^ look on October 1, with a vast expansion 
in the number of the services available and the 
opening of new telephone access points all over 
the UK- allowing 98% of subscribers to contact 
MicroLink for the cost of a local phone call Mail 
this coupon to join now, or to find out more. 






I would like to join MicroLink, and wish to 
take advantage of your offer of FREE regis- 
tration and telex validation (normally 
costing £15), and a month's FREE use of a 
MicroLink mailbox.* 



Please send me further information about 
the services available on MicroLink. 

This cxdusitv ulTi't relatm lu lime and iJiaractcr ihante* only 
and dm* mil include any Ihinl party iunJmrgal rtm'icm. 



Send to: MicroLink, Europa House, 
Adlington Park, Adlington, Macclesfield 
SK10 4NP. 



A( 10 



Send 
for a 
month's 
FREE trial 





1 \f ^inexpensive home micro io the most sophisticated 
business machine, into a complete communication 
centre. It becomes a telex machine, a fax machine, an 
electronic mail terminal, a retrieval tool that lets you 
search out and store data from the world's leading elec- 
tronic libraries. It gives you instant access to the credit 
status of every company in Britain. It keeps you up to 
date with all the latest news, sport and weather. It 
becomes a giant catalogue that lets you order goods 
directly from your keyboard. And it is always in action - 
24 hours a day, seven days a week. Through MicroLink 
vou can key into more than 1.200 business data- 
bases. And you can communicate directly 
with other services, from Britain's Telecom 
Gold to electronic mail networks all 
round the globe. And the cost? 
From as little as 25p a day. 




What the NEW 

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also offers: 

• Send a telex for 20% 
less than Telecom Gold 

• Exchange mail with 
100.000 users of Ihe 
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• Global links with 
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f) Fast, efficient and 
economical translation 
service in any language 

• Frror-free file transfer 
using Kermil. Xmodem or 
Ymodem protocols 

• Local access points in 70 
countries throughout the world 

PLl S the myriad of productiviti 
tools and leisure facilities that 
have helped to make MicroLink the 
service /'/ is today - from business 
advice to free downloaded software, from 
mortgage quotes to digitised satellite weather msps- 





that game 



On a wing anil a program 

FROM lime to time I get really 
hooked on a game. My favourite 
plaything of the moment is Leonardo, 
from Starbyte. The same fate has 
befallen Tony CoxOH from Nottingham 
who has written in with the three 
passwords to get on to later levels. 
Shut your eyes if you don't want to 
know what I hey are. 

The codes are Emmentaler. Alphorn 
and Matterhorn. 

It's OK. you can open your eyes 
again now. 

Tony has been just as busy with 
Grandslam'sThunderbirds. For levels 
2. 3 and 4 the codes are Recovery. 
Aloysius and Anderson. Well that 
really was a fab one. 



Stage 


Code 


2 


Ameoba 


3 


Bloop 


4 


Cheeki 


5 


Doinok 


6 


Enigma 


7 


Flitme 


8 


GeeGee 


9 


Handle 


10 


Icicle 


11 


lammin 


12 


Kikong 


13 


Lapdog 


14 


Mikardo 


Thomas 


McDemuott's 



password for Eliminator 



Calling people "mister"' is far too 
formal Mr M Stringer from 
Bedfordshire, but your lips are so 
great I'll let you off. First up the cheat 



Max the Hacks takes 
on everything from 
Eliminator to 
Interceptor 

mode for Carrier Command. Type 
"THE BEST IS YET TO BE" complete 
with spaces at any lime in the game 
and a message appears which says 
"CHEAT MODE ACTIVE". Once this 
happens you can press the + key on 
the numeric keypad to make Manias 
and Walruses immune from enemy 
missiles. They do not make you 
immune from crashing. 

If you get bored in your immune 
state you can seek a little amusement 
by clicking on the disc icon to quit. 




/ fought the law and the law won 



Then click on the flag icon lo return 
to the spinning carrier animation. 
Now for a bit of magic. Let your 
Fingers wander over to the + and - 
keys. These will cycle through all Ihe 
shapes in Ihe game. 

Real rulers of all things aquatic 
want to master the missions in EA's 
Interceptor. 

But if you can't be bothered to work 



HH AMMA CttMH'TIW; (h lniwt IWW 



HINTS 



through all the missions there is a 
quick way to mission six and the 
shadow sub. 

Here you have to destroy all the 
planes. Forget about the sub. although 
you can shoot it and watch the smoke 
pour out or land on it to re-arm. 

The quick way needs some Basic 
jiggery-pokery. You will need an 
Interceptor log disc. Start with 
Workbench. Make a copy of your 
Extras disc and put the original 
somewhere safe. You are going to 
need some space on your new Extras 
disc, so click on the icon to open the 
disc and then click on the BasicDemos 
drawer. 

Make sure this is the only selected 
icon, and hold down the right mouse 
button. Move the pointer to the top 
left hand corner and the Workbench 
menu. 

Highlight the discard option and let 
go of the mouse button. When the 
warning appears click on OK - you 
are using a copy aren't you? The 
BasicDemos drawer will be deleted. 
You now have more than enough 
room for your Interceptor improver. 



Load AmigaBasic from your copy of 
Extras disc then type the program 
into the list window: 

ie* *n m mssiois foi interceptor 

IE* BT I, STIllfiEl (€) AHI6A COMPUTING 
PtShftWI "I«C*T TOUR LOG DISK IN 
fttttfC 0* 

9tl%1 "i» MESS I KEY. 

win u= - 
i$=l«ir* 
trfl» NUIfftW -PLEASE WAIT. ." 
.-is "tF0:CONFIG\1 
tlM 11,1 U BS 
LSC1 BS*CftUU) 
PUT It,* 
FM 1*22 TO 27 
HIT II ,« 

clou « 

hmit "finished" 

Save the program to your copy of 
Extras disc then run the program. 
You will now need to put the 
Interceptor log disc - not the original 
game disc - into the drive. When the 
drive has finished whirring and Basic 
says "Finished" and OK reset the 
machine and pop your Interceptor 



disc into the drive. Your new log disc 
will now open up all the missions to 
you. Select 6 from the menu to go 
sub-busting 

Before I sign off here is a tip Adam 
Chapman from Bletchley wrote in 
with, a cheat for Helter Skelter. First 
player one must get an extra life 
before player two. Then both players 
must lose all their lives. Then player 
two comes back with 99 lives, and 
when he dies once player two will 
have 99 lives. 

Thanks Adam. Remember to send 
me your tips. 



And that's it for this month. Just time 
to say that if you have some tips you 
can win yourself one of the 
mysterious jiffy bags which litter the 
Amiga Computing office floor. 
Each bag contains a superb game 
and a Konix speedking joystick. Send 
your tips, on disc if possible, to Max 
the Hacks, Amiga Computing, North 
House 78-84 Ongar Road, Brentwood, 
Essex. CM 15 9GB. 



AmigaTEX 

AmigaTEX provides a powerful alternative in document 
preparation. It enables you to typeset complex or long 
documents, especially those ot a technical nature such as user 
manuals or journal papers. It gives you true typeset quality with 
kerning, ligatures, full floating accents, mathematical and 
technical symbols and the ability to produce tables and special 
formats. AmigaTEX will accept input from any text editor or 
word processor and with its built-in screen prev*wer, a 
document formatter of mainframe power becomes available. 
Also included with AmigaTEX are LaTEX - a document 
formatter with dozens of preformed styles, SIITEX - a slide 
generating macro, and BibTEX - a bibliography database 
program. AmigaTEX is fully file compatible with other versions 
of TEX. 

Printer drivers are available for most printer types and the com- 
plete set of Computer Modern Fonts is included. A companion 
program METAFONT is available for those who wish to create 
new fonts or modify existing ones. 

AmigaTEX is £125 and printer driver sets (laser series. 
Epson FX series, NEC P6 and Epson LQ series. HP 
DeskJet) are priced at £75 each. METAFONT is £50. 
All prices include VAT and carriage. 
Access and Visa accepted. 

For further details and free demo disk write or call: 

THE TEXT FORMATTING COMPANY 

14 OSBALDESTON ROAD, LONDON N16 7DP TEL: 01-806 1944 



Are you new to the Amiga, 

finding it difficuit to 
harness the power of this 
amazing computer ?, then 
what you need is help from 
the largest group of Amiga 
enthusiasts in the world 

members recehre:- 




ft Excellent discounts on software 

ft Technical support and on line help 

ft Superb hardware reductions 

ft A bi-monthly newsletter of over 60 pages! 

ft Access to a PD library of over 300 disks 

ft Use of the groups Amiga oniy bulletin board 

ft Discounts on books 

AMIGA 

DON'T HESITATE - JOIN NOW and start to 
appreciate what Amiga computing is all about. 

For further details write, enclosing a stamped 
addressed envelope to: 

The U.K. Amiga User Group, 
66, London Road, 
Leicester. LE2 0QD. 

Or Telephone : 
Leicester (0533) 550093 





Oclobnr 1989 AMKiA COMPl T7V 





before - 60.1)00 
mind-expanding 
words creating 
magik and mys- 
tery round 
every corner. 

There's a pow- 
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parser — and 
most disc ver- 
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stunning digi- 
tised pictures 
that dramatically 
heighten the 
atmosphere. 
Journey through the eons inside 
an amazing grandfather clock in 
Lords of Time. Weave incredible 
magik spells to rescue the power 
crystal in Red Moon. And face 
near-impossible odds to defeat 
the dreaded magician Mylgar 
in The Price of Magik. 

"The adventure bargain of the 
year" - Your Amiga 
"A wonderful piece of work" 
- ST Update 



Tho tril. 





SOFT W A 1 

Level 9 



FREE! 

Comprehensive clue sheets with every 
order, specially designed to give you only 
as much help as you need - and no more. 

Send to: Database Direct. FREEPOST. 
Ellesmcrc Port. South Wirral L65 3EB. 
Access-Visa orders: Tel: 051-357 2561. 





Time and Masik 


Lantflol 


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Tape 


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Din: 


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MiTiT 




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Apple. U 




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7048" 


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two 




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5724 


PC compatible* 




5574 




Macintosh 




1042 




1053 



Travel back to the Age of 
Chivalry when knights 
were bold, galloping 
across the countryside 
and rescuing damsels 
in distress. 
I«vel 9 recreates the 
lime of wizards and 
Ihe Knights of the 
Round Table in its 
greatest adventure yet. 
celot is a three-part adventure, 
spanning the complete saga from 
the foundation of the Order 
its finest hour 

- the quest for ^ -N- *^ 
the Holy Grail. ^SvA^' ' 

Guide Lance- " 
lot through his 
ninny exploits at 
Camelot. battle 
with wayward 
knights. and 
win the love of 
Guinevere and 
Elaine. 

You'll need 
all your strength, 
wit and valour 
to achieve your 
goal. 

"An amazingly well crafted game" 

- CPC Computing 

"Level 9's best adventure yet" 

- Amstrad Computer User 



Please supply the number(s) circled and incluc 
my FREE clue sheets. 

□ Cheque payable to Mandarin Software 

□ Please debit mv Access/Visa card. 

LJJ 




Li J I I I I J I I I t I 

Expiry dale 



/ 



Signed 

Add £2 per program Europe & Eire/£5 oversei 

Name . ■ 



Address 



TW onlv. tUncelot for CPOPCVW3 disc; £19.95. 



Postcode 



LETTERS! 




Saved from an island 

I READ with interest the review of 
Archipelagos in the July issue of 
your magazine. 1 was, however, a 
little surprised to see that the game 
contained no save game option, as I 
distinctly remembered having put one 
in while I was writing it. 

A quick run through the game 
reassured me that I hadn't gone 
completely bonkers - the option is 
indeed there. Although to be more 
accurate it's not strictly an option. 
Whenever an archipelago is 
successfully completed the fact is 
saved to the game disc whether you 
ask for it or not. Henceforth on 
entering the game the player can 
choose to "Select another 
archipelago" up to his currently saved 
position. 

1 know that Amiga gamesters are an 
enthusiastic hunch but to expect them 
to solve 9999 levels of a game at one 
sitting is. to say the least, optimistic. 
On my reckoning this task would take 
at least 69 day and nights of solid 
Archipelagoing, and would probably 
result in a nervous breakdown long 
before that time. 

I realise that this information is not 
very well documented in the manual 
and would therefore be grateful if you 
could pass it on to your readers. 

Paul Carruthers, 
Astral Software. 

Mutating Viruses 

AFTER reading with interest the 
answer to "what the doctor 
ordered" in the letters pages of your 
May 1989 issue about computer 
viruses, disc formatting, general care 
of discs and a suggestion on how to 
make a Blue Peter ashtray out of 
badly-corrupted discs (good idea!). 1 
bought a copy of VirusX. I have 
owned an Amiga 500 for six months 
and only recently witnessed a 
computer virus at work. 



Is it true that even virus antibody 
discs and virus killers can infect 
programs, mutating a virus that has 
already infected the disc originally 
and changing it into something ten 
times more deadly? 

Stephen Crane, 
Evesham, Worcestershire. 

Yes some antibody programs and 
virus killers can damage discs. VirusX 
is safe - although you should watch 
out for version 3.3, which is an 
impostor. 

Digital ears 

I AM thinking about buying a sound 
sampler for my 1 meg A500. It 
seems that there are many to choose 
from. I would prefer a good variety of 
input sockets - 3.5mm jack and 
phono sockets. 1 am also interested in 
the prospect of Midi, so AMAS would 
fit the bill here, but is the actual 
sampler any good, as Midi is only a 
secondary consideration? 

Can the FutureSound 500 hardware 
be bought separately from the 
software at a cheaper price than £80? 
I have read that a combination of Pro- 
Sound Designer software and 
FutureSound hardware would be the 
ideal combination. Would it total 
around £80? 

I would also like the idea of stereo 
sampling, but is it worth paying the 
extra, and which samplers do this? 
Please help me as I have been 
considering buying a sampler for a 
while now and I cannot decide. 

Kris Roger, 
Ashford, Kent. 

When we reviewed a whole hunch of 
samplers in our July 1988 issue the 
Eidersofi Pro-Sound came out on top. 



Since then Date! has launched its 
sampler and Applied Visions has 
updated FutureSound. which we 
agree now seems to have the best 
hardware in terms of value lor 
money. 

The Sophus 5 probably still gives 
the best quality, but the software is 
difficult to use and is expensive. You 
get much better samples from the 
more expensive samplers, and stereo 
is worth paying for. The Adept unit 
from HB Marketing is unique in 
offering real-time features. 

We would agree that the 
FutureSound 500 and ProSound Gold 
combination is an excellent one. By 
shopping around you should get the 
price down, but it is unlikely to come 
to less than £100. particularly since 
the price of FutureSound 500 has 
now gone up to £89.95 and it is not 
available without the software. For 
more details see Dean Friedman's 
article in this issue. 

Mumbo Jumbo 

NEXT week I will be parting 
with my Commodore 64 to 
trade it in part exchange for an Amiga 
500. I got the idea from a friend who 
did the same thing a while ago and 
am very keen on the idea. 

It is obviously a big jump and there 
are several things I would like to 
know. Firstly, what exactly is a meg? 
It sounds very technical, and while I 
am quite computer-minded, this is a 
new word to my vocabulary. I have 
picked up a rough idea of what it is 
but am still not completely satisfied. 

Another thing that nobody seems to 
know much about is whether or not it 
is possible to fit a hard drive to the 
A500. Is it possible? If so, how much 
would it cost? 

People also tell me that the first 
thing 1 should get when I've finished 



October 19H9 AMIGA COMPl'TIKC 107 



■LETTERS! 



paying for the Amiga is an external 
drive. Is this necessary or 
advantageous, and if so, in what 
ways? 

I had, and am keeping, a printer for 
my Commodore 64. It is the Seikosha 
SP-180VC. I know this is not directly 
compatible with the Amiga but it is a 
good machine and I am very happy 
with it. Is there any way in which 1 
could make it compatible with the 
Amiga? 

Julian Hirst, 
Sevenoaks, Kent. 

Remember when you bought your 64 
it had an "elephantine 64k of 
memory"? Well a meg is 1024k, or 16 
elephants. A standard Amiga comes 
with eight elephants, sorry, 512k, also 
known as half a meg, but the machine 
is easy to expand up to one meg. 

Digging through the ads in the 
August issue of Amiga Computing 
turns up an "Amiga 64 Emulator 
Lead" in the Triiogic advertisement. 
Give them a ring on 0274 691715. 

Curse of YASTP 

UNTIL recently I used a 
CPC6128 for WP. database, 
spreadsheet and a lot of games. My 
main source of frustration was 
bugged software. This would almost 
always be a game, and would almost 
always have been written by Ocean. 
Typical examples were Wizball 
(unplayable) and Arkanoid. 

I wrote to Ocean several times 
without reply. In desperation I wrote 
to the two main Amstrad CPC 
magazines (twice each), stating that I 
realised that they depended on people 
like Ocean for much of their revenue, 
but pointing out politely that they 
were responsible for the 
advertisements in their magazine. I 
asked that they speak to Ocean on my 
behalf. No answer. 

I now use an Amiga. One of the 
first games I bought was Wizball 
(despite my distrust of Ocean it has to 
be said that their games are good). 
The first time I cleared a couple of 
levels, the computer locked up, then 
displayed a Software failure message. 

Do I have any comeback against 
these people? Is there anything I can 
do to get them to take an interest in 
their customers? Do your other 
readers complain? I would be grateful 
if you could advise me. 




I doubt that there is a physical fault 
on my particular disc — it looks much 
more like the sort of programming 
error which I used to make. Anything 
you can do to help would be very 
much appreciated — even if you just 
say "Hello Roger" just to confirm that 
1 exist. 

Good magazine so far - there are 
many more rubbishy publications in 
the world of Amigas than was the 
case with the Amstrad. 

Roger Fenton, 
Clifton, Bristol. 

Hello Roger. We remember Arkanoid 
being bug free and great on the CPC. 
of course nowhere near the standard 
of the Amiga version, but then there 
you are. 

Amiga software has always suffered 
from the Yet Another ST Port 
(YASTP) syndrome, hut things are 
looking up with more programs being 
written to take full advantage of the 
hardware. Ocean has just proved the 
point with a proper version of New 
Zealand Story. 

This healthy attitude to 
development leads to a better 
understanding of the machine and 
fewer bugs. 

Protext praise 

HANK you for the help you 
JL gave me at the Commodore 
Show and the advice to get the new 
version of Protext from the Amor 
stand. I have tried out the new 
version, and I am very pleased with 
it 

As I was told that Protext has a Star 
LC24-10 printer driver I bought this 
printer at the show at a discount. I 
tried it all out, and it works fine. For 
line drawing I did not have to go into 
IBM mode as suggested in the 
manual. I like the hot key (shift- 
control-E) for the end of sentence 
deletion, which makes editing a lot 
easier. 

The manual is far superior to the 
early edition, my only criticism is that 
of the PL stored command - it is not 
until the end of the manual that it 
mentions the allowance that has to be 
made for the paper fed into the 



printer. 

You see I was setting the PL for the 
length of paper as stated in the 
beginning of the manual, 12in. I set 
my paper to 70 lines but I have now 
discovered that I have to make 
allowance for the paper that is fed in 
the printer, this setting is PL65. It 
seems to work all right, but is still 
confusing. 

I have yet to try out many of the 
projects that Protext has to offer, once 
I have mastered it, I will be able to 
transfer some of my files from the C64 
Superscript that 1 have been using for 
many years. 

) A Bailey, 
Upminster, Essex. 

Megabyte blues 

IMAGINE my excitement when I 
bought Timescanner. Imagine my 
disappointment on getting home and 
finding out it did not load. I returned 
the disc to Activision. 

During a telephone conversation 
with Activision my wife was told that 
Timescanner was a 1 meg game and 
will not load on a 512k machine. I 
hunted through all my recent 
magazines but found no report of this 
at all. Following another telephone 
conversation I was told: "We only 
found out last Thursday". 

How can any one who produces 
games not know whether or not they 
are making a half or one meg game 
after it's gone to the shops? I find this 
is an act of false advertising; people 
should be warned before they buy 
certain games. 

S. Brown, 
New Addington, Surrey. 

Some magazines don 't check things 
properly, some even write "reviews" 
of games long before the games are 
ready to go on sale, just so that they 
can shout "look, we were first". 

Yes, it is great to have exclusives 
but there is no point in rushing to the 
extent that you miss things or make 
mistakes. Of course the Amiga 
Computing review team picked up the 
Timescanner problem, which is 
probably due to the programmers not 
understanding the Amiga properly 
and producing a shoddy ST port. 

A pint >ull game isn 7 so complicated 
that it needs more than 512k. Stick to 
a magazine you can trust. We will 
warn you. 



1 08 AMIGA COMPETING October 1989 



111. 





V 

w w s 




1 iiiNi. *I1 M IHI MOl'SI 1 














1 iiMimioxr.uo 
1 .HAHAtrms AND AUO* 
1 mi i nm moicm* iHb 

1 BOXtS 





mm lootoMMAf-w ari 

AVAtlAHf IROM IMf 
nisiinPNfcr M( •« 1 «■ 



ATARI ST 
AMIGA 
IBM 

£29.95 




THE INTERACTIVE PROGRAM CREATOR 

WHAT IS IT? 

Talespin is a package which allows the collecting together of drawings, texts and 
sounds onto a series of pages together to form an interactive story, guide or textbook, 
which is read purely by clicking the mouse on the drawings or texts. Variables may be 
used to control the flow of narrative or record progress made. Talespin itself is entirely 
mouse-driven and verv user-friendly, requiring no programming skills for its use It 
includes an art package as well as importing Neochrome. Degas or IFF picture Hies 
and also imports ST-Replay or Amiga A.M. A.S. created Digitised Sound. The use ot 
sound is optional. Its facilities include giving full details of disk space usage, location 
of all pages referring to any particular page, drawing, sound or variable, completely 
interactive development allowing changes to any part of a title at any time, the copying 
of drawings and sounds from other titles, the 'chaining* to other titles allowing the 
spreading of a story or textbook across several disks, and the provision of Demo 
mode, which allows a title to run on its own for demonstration purposes. 

WHAT IS IT FOR? 

It can be used to create interactive adventure games, for profit, pleasure or instruction. 
Or in business to create a sales demonstration, or product servicing manual. Or in 
education: cither usin£ Talespin itself lo teach the design and logic of computer 
systems in a non-technical way. or using Talespin as a vehicle for the teaching ol any 
other subject. Or create an expert system with it. Or a school magazine. Or . . . 

CREATE YOUR OWN COMMERCIAL PROGRAMS 
Once youVe finished developing your program whether it's an adventure, an 
educational program or other you can lock your program so no one can enter the 

development mode. .. »*w ■■ • <* -.u.l* 

TALESPIN comes with a public domain display program called "Telltale with ihi* 
you can distribute your own programs or offer them to publishers. 

COMPLETE AND COMPREHENSIVE MANUAL 
The manual comes as a complete Tutorial with a scaled down venion of "The Grail 
adventure and also a comprehensive reference guide. 

TALESPIN COMMANDS AVAILABLE 
'choose create title 'Save position 'load position 'Select driver/ folder 'auto start 
'demo program 'help 'drawing define 'page define 'sound define 'variable define 
'turn to another page 'add drawing to page 'modify palette 'select background 
colour 'Page entry options 'List conditions 'list/set variables 'move drawing swap 
colour 'shrink reverse drawing 'change drawing order 'add/ edit/ delete text add/ 
delete chain sounds 'locate item 'show disk space 'show drawing/ sound/ page size. 

REVIEW FOR TALESPIN 
ST USER: 'Microdeal is putting its money where its mouth is and exhibiting 

justifiable faith in a very good product.' 
MICRO COMPUTER MART: 'Talespin in my opinion, is a highly commendable 

program.' 

ST'AMIGA FORMAT: 'Graphics cleverly used for variety - Talespin offers the 

opportunity to create an RPC type of adventure game 
which STAC and STOS certainly wonV 
COMPUTER GAMES WEEK: 'Talespin gives the programmer all the scope he 

could possibly need. ' 
ST ACTION: 'Talespin has brought the task of adventure creation within the reach 
of everyone!' 

• If you have a modem, phone our BBS - (0726) 65422 - & download Taleepm 
demos written by users. ' 30 day money back guarantee. 

TO ORDER 

SEND TO MICRODEAL 
PO BOX 68 Si Austell 
Cornwall PL26 4YB 
Allow 28 days tor delivery 




W8l 



BY PHONE 
WITH CREDIT CARDS 
TELE (0726) 68020 
£29.96 line! P&P) 



ESS 




Please send me Talespin at £29.95 (incl P&P) 
I OWN A □ ST D AMIGA □ IBM 

□ Cheque enclosed made payable to MICRODEAL 

□ Please debit my credit card account Expiry date 



Name . . 
Address 



Signed: 



[10 Morhot Place. Si. Albans. Herts 
St. Albans (0727) 41396 < 56005 



Hobbyte Busbyte Computer Centre 



Unit lG, Arndale Centre. Luton. Bads 
Luton {0582) 457 1 95/4 1 1 281 



] 



AMIGA ACCESSORIES 


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DIGITISING PACK —nr. 


E319.9S 


Camera, DI_M«* Gold 3.0, cabin 




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fb9.95 


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£24.95 


CASIO MT 340 KEYBOARD 


tl 19.95 


MODEM PACK. AD/AA HAVES V2U23 


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Commodore Bualnaaa 

Can It a. Principle 
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AS ANY ABOVE, BIT ALSO WITH THE WORKS 


ADD £50 


Note that special prieei are available for other Amiga eon- 


figurations alio 




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Inc. Modulator, 24 games on 4 disci: Arcade, Adxnturc, Board and Shool-em-up games, Sports 
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Rabbit, Power Play, Mercenary, Alphairuu One, No Excuses, 7.napse, Nebulous, Star Ray, 
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Also with M33 monitor AND LClOcolour Printer 1749 Inc VAT 

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Inc. Modulator, 24 games on four discs: Arcade, Adventure, Board and Shool-em-up games, 
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Also with 10WS/M33 monitor AND LClOcolour Printer £938 Inc VAT 

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MONO COLOUR 

RRP SALE RRP SALE 

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FRf C 74 MR ON SITE MAINTENANCE WITH THESE CBM MACHINES 

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PC 20 WITH 32MB HARD CARD 849 779 999 B99 1149 

PC40 AT SINGLE DRIVE 1299 1065 N/A N ft 1549 

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PC40 40MBHD'40MBT/STRMR 1949 1598 N/A N/A 2199 

PC60 306 512KB SINGLE DRIVE 1249 1029 1399 1159 1449 

PC60 2.5MB SINGLE DRIVE 1999 1649 2149 1779 2199 

PC60 WITH 40MB HARD DISC 2340 1939 2549 1999 2599 

PC60 40MB HD 40MB T/STRMR 2699 2229 2899 2394 2949 

PC60 WITH 60MB HARD DISC 2549 2099 2749 2269 2799 



SALE 
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999 

1270 
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£329 95 
£73.95 
EIQfl H 



DragooaLari OB ■ 

All books 10% a* 

BEST PRICES ON ALL 
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BEAT ANT GENUINE 
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To pitta your ordar. eandchaqu* ooalal 
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Ltd.. lOMtrkal Ptaco. SL AJhana. Harla A LI 
JOG. or can with a copy at Ma ad. at our 
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alao pftona your ordar to our aalaa dea* on 
SL Albans (0*27| 55005. AccaaaVlaa and 
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educational, madlcal aufoorloaa and PLCa 

• re ac cap lad 



mm >*■'• •• urn* ml i > i ■ ■ ■ ■•■ > ■ • > . ■ - ■ i 

IW AMIGA COMI'trilNC October 19H>.) 




Public Domain Disks 

We have a large number of Public Domain 
Disks in stock, including 

Fred Fish 

TBAG 

Amicus 

Send now for your free catalogue, or 
simply send order details with your 
cheque (Plus £1 P&P) payable to Amtech 
Computing 



1-5 


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Try our PD Starter Disks, especially 
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AMIGA HARDWARE 

A500 ComplaJt _ 289.00 

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AMIGA 50 D PACKAGE 
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Kind Wordi Include* a 90,000 word UK 
dictionary, ipellcheckar and mailmergt 

PRICE ONLY £565 

AMIGA ACCESSORIES 

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Please nng lor other capacity drives 
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New 24pm Swift 24 



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S«kosha51B0AI60col.24pin 

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NEC P6.80 Character .... 

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*BSOLUT£ L 




YOU KNOW that 
Amiga Computing 
is the most informative, 
educational and action- 
packed magazine dedicated 
to the Amiga. 

With its cover mounted disc 
each month, packed with use- 
ful utilities and demos of the 
latest software on the market, 
straight-down-the-line reviews 
and comprehensive hands-on 
tutorials, Amiga Computing 
provides you with everything you 
need to know about your micro. 





7 




WE KNOW you'll 
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own copy each month, 
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And as an added bonus 
if you subscribe now we 
will knock £5 off the cover 
price of 12 issues 

PLUS well send you a FREE 
copy of Batman The Movie . . . 
on the same day it is released 
-2nd October 1989. 



Place your order NOW - this exceptional offer is only guaranteed until October 31! 



Otters SLtjfOCl 

to availabiMy 

AO UK prices Include 
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AS overseas orders 
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Valid to 31.10.89 




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COMPUTING 



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RENEWAL 



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Buy any Amiga Pack and receive our FREE STARTER PACK (includes 20 Public 
Domain Disks). Existing Amiga users can buy our SPECIAL PACKS lor £30 inclusive. 

AMIGA A500 PACKS 

PACK A Amiga A500. Mouse. Modulator. Our Special Pack X3iQ 00 

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Pack „ „ £548.99 

PACK F Amiga A5O0. Mouse. Modulator* At 084 Colour Monrto-.Our Specal Pack £649.99 

PACK G Amiga ASOD. Mouse. Modulator .A1010 Disc Orrve.Aega Sontx.Our Special Pack ...ES4B 99 

Amiga External Disk Drive with through port/disable switch , „ , £95 DO 

AT Bndgeboard ..... „ £860 00 

For AMIGA B2W0 ring lor our special price 

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AMIGA PUBLIC DOMAIN OISKS 
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»dv Ajnga Bmc HI IS Amiga hanlwait flar Manual (77 IS MBJ ■ Beginnem _ tl? IS 

Am^i 30 G>i3"m Prog BaKEll.tt Amiga lnt»Son Rtt Manual ...I7f.1t Uacomftga* AmfllAfWI flf.aa 

»-,!-;:(«• i CIS K Amiga MacnineLaae G- c« CH « BegimersGuidelOllwAinga . til. ■ 

AirvgiAss ling Prog HIM Amiga HecBiiw language II*. IB Coirwrt's W BookolAmga ...US » 

Amiga inn >■:,•< .», Out nets Am.Mcniton Base Prog C_o* tl I IS Comwt'i 2n0 Boo" & Amiga .. I 11 IS 

Amiga DOS Inside i Out til.** AmflaPrcfl HanOtxwVoi . 1 . .E73B EterrwiU/yAm^iIUw ... . C14 IS 

Amiga DOS Manual OJ.*S AmgaProg NarKtBOok Vol ? 173 94 ln«o« Amga Gfaoflics CIS 95 

At j.i DOS Qu>tk Ret M.IS Anga Prog Glide - .EU.4S Intifle Amga wift C CO IS 

AnsgaOOSRaf .>•<■ C14.H Am Rom Kerne! Rat Man £«c t2? M ■jcUlartGoceia'Amigt tl] 15 

ATiga Dik Drva Irvda ft Out C77.SS Am Rom Karn Rtf Ma" Lib DavOT SB K«i ar« tSe Anica CU IS 

AmgaGD Graphcs. Soupo ..H7.*B *n(i S,'.»^ Prog GukM ...n? «S Mom locks ft T«jB -......£'8*5 

An>ga Handbook _ CIS » Amga I nets ft Tips It' IS ftogremm«fiGi»da tar Amga ta H 

We also slock Commotion 64 $ and PC Compatibles. Pegasus Software/Stationery. 
Please ring for details 

AB prices are inclusive of VAT Goods are despatched within 24 hours ol cleared transaction 
Personal CaDers welcome Please send your cnequeJPosial Orders to: 

QUADS0FT COMPUTERS 

Unit 306, 203/213 Mare Street, London ES 3QE 
Telephone: 01-533 5116/0860 564231 




E3 TEL: 0983 79 496 



ACCOUNTS 

Desk Top Budget 49 91 

Home Accounts 23 9? 

Panmead Accounts 

Modules.: 

Small Bus 

Ace. XtralMB 99 8? 

Small Bus 

Ace. Cash 1MB 59 80 

COMMUNICATIONS 

A Talk Plus _ 61.07 

BBS PC 89 93 

KComm2. 23 92 

HubyViewrterm 74 98 

DATABASE MANAGERS 

Acquis* ion V13 159 85 

Data Retrieve Pro 160 77 

06 Man l«94 

Form Masler (horses) ... . 4002 

KData 35.88 

Mailshot Plus.... 37.95 

Microbase 17.94 

Microfiche Filer Plus 117.76 

Microfiche Filer 5888 

Prole*! Filer 19.78 

Superbase Personal 2 66 93 

Superbase Professional 169 97 

Superbase Personal 44.85 

DESKTOP PUBLISHERS 

City Desk V2 Q 119 83 

Page Setter , 56 81 

Pageslream 1MB 119.83 

Professional Page 1MB 209 99 
EDUCATION 

Spanish....- _ 29 90 

EDITORS 

Cygnus Ed Professional 59 80 
GRAPHICS 

Anmagk , „„.,„,, 6992 

C Light ,...44.65 

Comic Setter 1MB 39 79 

Deluxe Paint III 1MB 6095 
Delute Photobb 49 91 

Deluxe Video 54.97 

DigiPaint3 49 91 



Movie Setter „ 

Photon Paint II 

PttmaM 

Professional Draw 
4140 Sculpt 40 Animate Junior 89 93 

The Director 

Turbo Stiver 30 

Video Tltler 

Zoetropt , — 

HARDWARE 
512KA5O0RAM 

Expansion ri -,.„.■ . 

A59020MB Hard Disk 
A M A S. Midi System 

Dig. i View Gold 

Gomt. The Button 
NEC 3.5* OmeJS witch 
Star LCI O&Cabta 
Star LC10 

Colour & Cable „ — 
PACKAGES 

Publishers Choice 

The Works Platinum 

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PROGRAMMING 
Artec C Developer ... 

Oevpac 2 

Hisoft Bask: 

Lattice C 5. 

Moduta 2 Standard 
Pascal 

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55 89 SOUND 

6187 Dehixa Muse Const Set 49 91 

37 95 Instant Music -..22 77 

99 82 Music X..™. 1MB 

SPREADSHEETS 

4186 Digwlc 3036 

99 82 Superplan 69 92 

...8050 UTILITIES 
.79 81 Amigados Express 24.64 

Amlgados Toolbox 39 79 

Amlklt For Beginners 29 90 

99 82 ARexx language 29 90 

3G9 84 BA-D OiskOphmiser 33 58 
... 77.74 Disk Master Housekeeper 36.80 
11983 DOS 2 DOS File Transfer .3680 
54 97 Enhancer 1 3 Workbench 14.72 
... 78.89 Family Tree Geneology .. _ 39.79 
.17986 Gomf 3 Guru Interceptor 2783 

Maxidosk UtilflkM. 56.12 

21 9 88 Project D Backup & Tools 30 82 

Prolexl Office 26.91 

69.92 Superback H/D Backup 39 79 

.159 85 Virus Inlet! Protection 3496 

. 72.45 Word Perfect Library 68.09 

X Copy 2 Backup & Editor 19 78 

139 64 W0RDPROCESS0RS 

44.85 Kindwords2 _ 36.80 

58 88 Microtia 17.94 

178.25 Prolan 69 92 

. 7738 Transcript 32.89 

62 79 WordPerfect 169 97 

53 62 Write & File 1MB 



Richard Howe A Angela Kammetl 
Applied Research Kamal 

Coras Farmhouse. Chile Green. Ventnor. P03B 2 LA, U.K. 

POSTAGE: UK Free. Software to Europe E4. to World EB 
COMPANY: Amiga/QL specuksts. established 3 years 
CHEQUES: London Sterlmg Payable to A R K please 
VAX: All prices include U K VAT at 15% 
EXPORT: Remove UK. VAT <=Price/l 15) 
DESPATCH: Usually withm 48 hours 
PRICES: Are subfect to change 

QUICK ACCESS TO OVER 1400 AMIGA PR00UCTS 



m Fl FTFUT A world °* informalion 

L L L I L It I at your fingertips 



UNBEATABLE PRICES FROM 
MANSFIELD COMPUTERS 




BULK DISKS WITH 
2 FOR 1 LIFETIME 
WARRANTY 



5.25" disks In poiybag with 
labels, sleeves and write 
protect labs 

25 O/S, D/D 48 tpi disks . E8.95 
25 D/S, D/D 96 Ipi disks . £9.50 



3.5" DISKS 8. BOXES 

10 3.5 - 0/S, D/D 135 TPI disks in 

white box f 8.30 

25 35" 0/S. D/D 135 TPI disks in 40 

cap disk bos -C22.B5 

40 3 5* D/S. D/D 135 TPI disks in 80 

cap lockable boi J32 9b 

75 3 5' D/S. 0/O 135 TPI disks In 80 

cap kxkable be* UHM 

103 5" High Density (2 meg) disks m 

white boil tlfiiS 



DISK BOXES 

3 5* 40 cap 

3 5' 80 cap kxkablo , 

5 25* 50 eap lockable rt« 

S 25* 100 cap lockable ES .95 



E7.9-5 



5.25" DISKS & BOXES 

25 5.25' 0/S, D/D 96 TPI disks m 50 cap 
tockableboi £14,95 

50 5 25' 0/S. D/D 96 TPI disks in 100 
cap lockable box 124.95 

10 5 2b' High Density ' 6 meg disks m 
bo* tfl.as 



SPECIAL OFFER 

When you purchase one ol the above ilems why not Ireal 
yoursell lo our super accessories 



De lia Mouse Mat .. 
3 5* Head Clean c . 
t00 Add'ess Labeli 

3'*i1'/ts* - 

50 3 5' Disk Labels 



ns, 

..£1.75 
UA. 

s 



Mouse Holder £1.75 

5 25* Head Cleaner IU5 

1.000 Address labels 
SWH'rV 14-50 



Rtrmmbir all dlski are certified 100% error he* and are supplied 
with full user tele. Plus our amazing 2 tor 1 lifetime warranty 



Send or phone your orOsv to; 
Manatleld Com put era, 33 Albert Street, Mansfield, Notte. NG18 1EA 
Tel: 0623 31 202 Fax 0623 422969 
All prices Include VAT & Delivery In U.K. 
24 hour answering service 
Alter 6pm phone 0623 65351 2 and leave your order 




The MicroteKt Adaptor turns your Amiga inlo an advanced Teletext TV 
giving you fast access lo any of the free pages from Ceefax or Oracle. 
Hundreds of pages constantly updated to give you the very latest 
Information, at the touch of a button. 

The mouse may by used lo selecl any page then print it or save it to disc. 
Saves may be compact or IFF, it can read out the news and is easily 
programmed to do all these things automatically. With true 'FaslTexf, the 
system knows what pages are likely to be selected next and gets them In 
advance making them available instantly. Many more facilities are also 
provided. The Adaptor connects to the Parallel port, your printer is then 
reconnected to a socket on the Adaptor and when the computer ts not in use 
you can watch TV on the monitor! 

"A highly recommended purchase" 
Amiga Computing - Feb '89 

At only £124.80 ♦ VAT for an advanced Teletext TV, its excellent value for 
money. VHF/UHF International version: £169.50 



SMICROTEXTS 

Dept AG, 7 Birdlip Close, Horndean, Hants P08 9PW 
Telephone: (0705) 595694 



October 1989 AMIGA COMPt TING til 



Public Domain Software 
for the Amiga 



from £3 per disk all inclusive 

* Over 500 disks! 



* Membership not necessary 
* Fasl Service 



We have one of the largest 
collections ol PD software for the 
Amiga in the UK. 
We currently slock: 

O FISH 1-204 

O AMICUS 1-26 

O SLIPPED DISK 1-40 

OFAUG HOTMIX1-75 

O PANORAMA 1-71 

O AUGE 1-25 

O T-BAG 1-23 

All the above are E3 each ♦ 1 FREE 
when you order 10 

2 catalogue disks available at £5 
which give details of the above 
collections 



HARDWARE: 
External Disk Drive £88.95 
Amiga A500 £360 
All prices are fully Inclusive of 
VAT 

* JOIN THE CLUB! Interested In 
lolning our user club? Write or 
phone for details * 



Our own special selection 
£4.00 each 

O AP0U6 CU HELP 

Contused by CLP This one « lor you 
O APOL n LANGUAGES 

Lisp, Prolog. Logo, forth 
O APOL #6 AMIGA DISK DOCIOfl 

LUe MM program* 1 
O APDL #14 BEST ARCADE GAMES 

O APDL #15 BEST BOARD GAMES 

Backgammon. Oifwllo, Yahttee de 
O AP0L#17 BUSINESS COLLECTION 

Editot. Sp«ja*nee1 A Database 
O APDL '41 DATABASES 

Kmd track at your data 
O APOL #42 ADVENTURES Vol 2 

CatUi A guphic adventure & several 

o WjlShmtommfm 

O APDL M4 WORD PROCESSING 
Word Processor & SpeHchecttf 
Q APDL #45 PUZZLE & STRATEGY GAMES 

O APOL #48 MAGNIFICENT FORCE » 

20QealTune» 
O APDL #52 FRACTAL GENERATORS 
O APOL #53 UNKNOWN 5 DEMOS 

SuDtrb eve-popping demoe with graal music 
O APDL #57 JUNGLE COMMAND 

O B^»5ff SOLACE SHAREWARE 
EXTRAVAGANZA Some ol the best 
shareware programme* on easy-to uie 
mer.u driven diec 

O SPECIAL SUrtrekd MB) SuperD PD frame 
tor those wilh 1 Mb. 3 discs £8 00 
Write or phone tot a FREE Lat 



THE AMIGA PD LIBRARY 

Dept AMC, 140 Rushdale Road. Sheffield. S8 9QE 
PD Hotline 0742-588429 (9am-9pm> 



VideoStudio for the AMIGA 



-Comprabenvv m its capatxlAws' 
'VktaoStudfc impasses greatly' 




WHAT 
VIDEO 



IMF ZVP VnOSTUOtO PACKAGE « ACOMR.ETE EASY-IO U5E VIDEO POST 
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TME 

FO»*CIIOH3 
TEST 

FACHrTlES 
TITLING 



* A diotco fcom up to «096 oWoun. _ 

* A U»*v ol Wipe-Fad* a«lw» and BonW (maa») i«n*m« 
tor uw w* ounkicMd «doo 

* ftottmabto. Suton Ckx» ana BroaOeaal alyto VTB sl-ndoeA. 

* A suiw ol aiawianJisM »■> pafloms ** audio »« 
Eg CraaaMitfi. TWcaid G/»»ica» a* 

* A Main aoean n"a» ** mule-cotow tool op-aiion 

* A Soon ufltn »noom vrticat end honicnai attoaing 

* A SufiUSai «*«U> coWu' Lmo and laat Cul Fade and Pnn< opwms 

paduaga or a Wdao dtgUaarnVarTie g<aM*i' 

* impomrvtipo-ing ol Fonla t&lrom oBwc pacKapss 

MDyia ol mmary 



VIDEOSTUDIO <s availabie now lor 



IE 



HQ 



Prov«Jeo Plus - ™— - — »• 

5upa< P< Frame Grabber . 

HN 20Mb Hard Desk (up to 2Mb Bam can be liltetd) 



COT 



£207.00 

£559 00 

£69 00 

£399 



r. uiM.iajd?iw «i:«»i*'iW*i 

Minigen (lo* the nome user) 



Randal A8802 (For tn« pWsemi-pro) -" — -- — 

G2 VOeoCenlor professional Genlock rESZZZSZZS' 

(The G2 is S VHS oompatible . has manual Faoats-Tnaers) 



£115 

"87 

- «85 



save £22) £193 
(save £5)£1B0 



-JMOM1 - vdeostodc software „ •»—•■■ 

M.n>q«n . V<J«o G«n»nc Maetar Tilling sottware -y—g 

(Video Master Software will run on an unexpended A500) 

Rorviale ABB02 . Vrfe«tludto.....™™~-. ».»--«■ "TiT^:;;^ CALL 
Randala AB806 Proleseional Sludb Quality Genlock * V-leostud* 

flMZE TECHNOLOGY 

20 Woodlands Road. Walthamstow E173LE 
Mail order only 01-5Z0-9/M 



E3 



ADVERTISERS' 
INDEX 

Amiga PD Library *** 

Amigatex „. 

Amiga Users Group 

Amtech Computing 

Anco ■ ' t „ 

Applied Research Kernel 

Amor 

Artronic 17 -*J 

Ashcom 

Byteback ~' 

Calcu Software Jj 

Castle Software « 

Club 68O0O 

Computer Shopper Show vj 

C.S.D 5? 

Database Educational Software • 

Dataplex „ " 1 

Datel Klectronics no 

Desktop Publishing Show »» '* 

Diamond Computers M 

"i8! com i";i:;r.:»i!!*.rioi 

"!8ip r ° Z 59 

Digita 63 

Electcomp • 

Entertainment International *' 

Evesham Micros 7 ^ 

First Micro ' 

Futureplace Computers °* 

George Thompson Services « 

Gordon Harwood Computers 4+a 

Hobbyte Computing 

Lad broke Computing 

Mandarin Software ■ "JJ 

Mansfield Computers **J 

Maze Technology j 

M D Office Supplies «g 

Memory Expansion Systems i ■ « 

Microdealer 

MicroUnk 63 

Microsnips * 

Microtext 'JJ 

Midland Microsoft 

Mindscape ' 

Mirrorsoft 

Oasis Services ' ° 

Postronix ' ' 

Quadsoft l *2 

Seventeen Bit Software * ™ 

Shield Computer Services 

Silica Shop 1 " 

SK Marketing *J 

Soft Machine ' 

Softsellers 

Special Reserve 

Sublogic Corporation 

Track Computer Services "J 

Treble H Computing 

Trilogic 3/ 



SUMMER OFFER 



A500's ★ £35.00 FIXED PRICE REPAIR ★ ST's 

Includes - courier delivery, parts, labour, full service and 

V.A.T., 90 day warranty. 5 day turnround 
(subject to parts availability) Collection can be arranged. £1 1 .50 extra. 

All our engineers are fully experienced in 16 bit technology 

Repairs undertaken on Amiga 2000, Atari Mega ST, Printers, 
Monitors, V.D.U.'s etc. and most Business & Home Computers. 
Low cost maintenance agreements available . 
Educational & dealer discounts given. 

SHIELD COMPUTER SERVICES LTD 
50 Fliiton Road. Urmston, Manchester M31 3AB 
Tel: 061-747 3185 Fax: 061-747 0515 



tU AMIGA COMPUTING October 1*0 



FREE! 



TENSTAR PACK 

WORTH OVER £229! 




FREE! - AMEGAS - by Players 




WEE! - ART OF CHESS - by SPA 




FREE - INSANITY FIGHT - by Microoeal 




FREE - MERCENARY COMP - by Novagen 




FREE! - BARBARIAN, ULT WARRIOR by P.iiacp | FREE! • TERRORPOOS - by Psygnos.s 





FREE! - BUGGY BOY by Elite 




FREE! - IKARI WARRIORS - by 



m 




FREE - THUNDERCATS - by EtHe 




FREE - WIZBALL - by Ocean 



C s Commodore 




£399 

INCLUDES 
FREE UK 
DELIVERY 



£346 

The Amiga 500 is one ol a new breed ol technologically 
advanced computers, which are now emerging as the new 
standard lor home computing, based .around the new Motorola 
68000 chip. The A5O0 has 512K RAM and a 1Mbyte double 
sided disk drive built-in. It can be connected directly to a wide 
range ol monitors, or to a domestic TV set through a TV 
modulator. Designed with the user in mind, the A500 features a 
user friendly WIMP environment and comes supplied with a Iree 
mouse. And. when you buy your Amiga from Silica Shop, the 
UK's Nol Amiga specialists, you will experience an alter sales 
service that is second to none, including a technical support 
helpline and tree newsletters and price lists Return the coupon 
below lor our current information pack, which will give details of 
the Silica service and the very latest Silica Amiga offers. e&oe 



WHY SILICA SHOP? 



B**o'i you deode to Duy you» ne~ Commooore Am»ja computer. 

*• *i.gB**i you Con*M)ei — '. ca'e>u*y WHERE you Duy i Them are 
MANV companies err© car oriei you ■ compute' > Krw peripherals and 
we lop lan sewng titles there ere 'EWCR companies who can Off ■ 
wide- mngi o' products lor your tomouiei as «m a* e*pert eOKe and 
help ■ you need il 'ne<e <s ON 1 .' ONE company emo can provide 
me wgesi range o> Amiga leiaied products >n M UK a lull time Amiga 
lpec>al'sl technical nelplme aid m-depin aner sales support i"C ud> n g 
Iree naanieiters and Drocnu'es delivered lo you' dOO' lew as long as yOu 
•equm alter you pu'cnase your compute* Thai one company <s Silica 
Stop «• na«e oeen estaDtisned m me none computer held Kv len years 
and can now daer to meet out customers requirements wtn an accuracy 
and understanding Kttich >s second lo none Hem are just some ol the 
things *• can oner you 

THE FULL STOCK RANGE ihe largest rang© ol Amiga 
related penpnerais accessoniw hooks and fiortwnre in Ihe UK 

AFTER SALES SUPPORT: the stall at Smca Shop are 
dedicated lo hetp you lo get trie twist )»om your Amiga 

FREE NEWSLETTERS: Mailed direct lo your home as 
soon as we pnnl them, featuring alters and latest releases 

FREE OVERNIGHT DELIVERY: On all hardware orders 
shipped to Silica Shop customers withm the UK mainland 

PRICE MATCH PROMISE We will normally match our 
competitors oilers on a same product same puce' basis 

FREE TECHNICAL HELPLINE Full time team ol Amiga 
technical experts to help you with you' technical queries 

But don't just take our word lor it Complete and return the 
coupon oeow lor our latest Amiga literature and begm to 
experience the Silica Shop specialist Amiga service 



PHOTON PAINT PACK 



A500 Computer 
TV Modulator 
Photon Paint 
TenStar Pack 

TOTAL RRP: 

LESS DISCOUNT: 

PACK PRICE s 



£399.99 
£24.99 
£69.95 

£229.50 

£724.43 
£325.43 

£399 



FREE FROM SILICA 



When you Buy the Amiga 500 Irom Silica Shop, you will not only 
get a high power value 'or money computer, we will also give 
you some spectacular (tee gitti First ol an. we are now including 
a TV modulator with every A5Q0 stand alone fceyboard, so you 
can plug your Amiga straight mto your TV at home (the 
modulator is nol ncluded witn ihe A&OO'AlOfMS pack as it is not 
■equired lor use with monitors) Secondly we have added a Iree 
copy ol Photon Paml an advanced graphics package with an 
RRP ol £69 95 Last (ana by no means least'l. so that you can oe 
up and running straight away, we are giving away the sensational 
TENSTAR GAMES PACK w>th every A500 purchased at Sidca 
Snop Th<s pac* leatures ten lop Amiga titles which have a 
combined RRP ol nearly £230' Return the coupon tor details 



A500 Computer 
1084S Colour Monitor 
Photon Paint 
TenStar Pack 

TOTAL RRP: 

LESS DISCOUNT: 

PACK PRICE 



£399.99 
£299.99 
£69.95 
£229.50 

£999.43 
£350.43 

£649 



FREE TENSTAR PAC 



71 



When you buy your Amiga 500 
irom Silica Snop. we want lo 
make sure you get the best 
deal possible Thai is wh. wo 
are giving away tne TPM5TAB 
GAMES PACK worth nearly 
£?M. absolutely FREE wilh 
every A500 puicnased Irom us 
The TenStar Games Pack inc- 
ludes len hues lo> the A5O0 
each individually packaged in 
is own casing wim instructions 



A meg. is 
Art Ol Cheta 
Barbanan, Ull Warrior 
Buggy Boy 
Ikari Warriors 
Insanity Fight 
Mercenary Comp 
Terror pods 
Thundercals 
Wiibail 



TOTAL RRP: £229.50 



AM 

£14.95 
£24 95 
£19.95 
£24.95 
£24.95 
£24 95 
£19.95 
£24.95 
£24.95 
123 95 
£229.50 

INC MT 



II you a'leady own an Amiga compute- and would Iwe to Oe registered on our mailing list as an 
Amiga u-se>. lei us ana* We enu be pleased lo send you copies ol uui price dsn and newsletters 
rPEE Or CHARGE as iney Become a>a>iablr Complete the coupon and return it lo our SidCup 

hranrr *ro (»■<)■ r- np«Krr cj i n^ir an-.! *t..j yr. -r thai .-, HCOnd tO mint 



| PLE 



To: Silica Shop Ltd. Dept AMCOM 10789, 14 The Mews. Hathedey Road. Sidcup, Kent DA14 

PLEASE SEND ME FREE LITERATURE ON THE AMIGA 



SILICA SHOP 



SIDCUP (& Mail Order) 01-308 1111 

1-4 The Mews Halher/ey Road. Sidcup. Kent. DAI 4 4DX 

OPEN VOH-SA! pant - 5 3Qpf LATE NlOHT ~-HtUA ' -Jj.Ti 



LONDON 01-580 4000 

52 Tottenham Court Road. London. WtPOBA 
OPEN: MOH-SA T 9 3Qam - 6 OOpn< LATE NlOHT: NONE 



Mr/Mrs/Ms: 



Address 



Initials: 



Surname 



I44DXA 

IIGA I 



■ 



■ 



LONDON Ol 629 1234 ext 3914 

Saltndges ' isl llooel. Oxford Strvat. London. W1A tAB 
OPEN: WOA/ SAT Aim ■ S»«i-i LATE NIGHT THURSDAY-***, 8pm 




Postcode 



Do you aireaOy own a computer 
It so, which one do you own? 



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